Chicago PD season 5 spoilers: Chicago Justice alum Monica Barbaro to appear
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Monica Barbaro is going to reprise her role as ASA Anna Valdez on the fourth episode of the Dick Wolf series. She worked closely alongside Peter Stone on Chicago Justice this past season, but with Philip Winchester’s character now off in New York (he will make a number of appearances on Law & Order: SVU), this is an opportunity to see how she is handling that transition — plus a chance for some of the Chicago PD team to see some of her skills put to the test. Maybe she gets a chance to work with Seda’s Antonio Dawson in some capacity. At the very least, this is a nice little gift for those of you out there who did enjoy Chicago Justice when it was on.
In retrospect, we actually do think of it as somewhat of a surprise that Justice got canceled when you think about a few of the different factors that were happening with it in the spring. For one, it was generating at least okay ratings in its timeslot, and was actually performing better in the demo than Shades of Blue following it. (Yet, that show ended up getting renewed.) We also do think that there was still some great ratings potential courtesy of some of the crossover episodes.
If there was one thing that probably was holding the show back to a certain extent, it was probably just that court shows sometimes take some time to build and audience, and since they’re not action-heavy, it’s hard to get a lot of people interested in them from the get-go. We do think if Chicago Justice had more of a shot it would’ve been around for a second season — beyond that, we do also just think that NBC probably wanted to reduce the total number of Chicago shows on their roster. Devoting four hours a programming every week to one single family of shows is a lot, and it is five when you throw in there Law & Order: SVU.
In addition to her work as Anna on Chicago Justice, you may also know Barbaro from her scene-stealing turn as Yael on the second season of UnREAL.
What do you think about Monica Barbaro joining Chicago PD?
Be sure to share some of your thoughts on the matter below! We’ll see if this one appearance does lead to her showing up in more down the road.
For some other news related to the One Chicago franchise, we’d say to head over here to see the latest Chicago Fire poster news. It may cause some further speculation as to whether or not Matthew Casey is really alive. (Photo: NBC.)