Arienne Mandi Elevates Chicago Pd Episode 20 with Voight
Chicago pd Season 13, Episode 20, “The Lost Years,” puts Eva Imani and Hank Voight on the same case and lets Arienne Mandi carry the hour. The result is an emotional pivot point for a season that has already delivered plenty of strong episodes, but this one is doing different work: it is building the finale around Imani, Voight, and the questions their partnership leaves open.
Arienne Mandi and Voight
Mandi’s performance as Imani grounds the episode, and the review treats that as the hour’s main engine. Imani works as an individual character and as a foil to Jason Beghe’s Voight, which is the sharper achievement here: she is not just another temporary challenge for him, and the story gives her room to change the shape of the case while still staying inside the team dynamic.
Voight has had plenty of relationships where he kept the upper hand or only faced resistance for a little while. Imani is different. She and Voight operate from mutual respect, and they understand how much they have in common, which makes their scenes feel less like procedural routine and more like the show testing a new version of its central power balance.
Dante, Kevin, and the field
During the case, Voight worked by Imani’s side like he said he would, while Dante stayed in the field telling the team, “Hey, let’s move,” and making sure Imani took a breath or two every once in a while. Kevin pointed Imani to interrogation, and Dante also made sure he took Imani’s gun. Those details keep the hour practical: Imani is not isolated, but she is being handled as someone whose judgment needs support in the moment.
The review also says Imani went off the rails with about as good a reason as you can have, and that is where the episode finds its friction. Her sister could not even remember her, which turns the case from a standard partner story into something more personal and more disruptive to the clean mechanics of the job.
The Lost Years finale setup
“The Lost Years” works because it does not resolve everything. It plays as a building block for the future, and the story and its dynamics are going to be the focus of the finale. That leaves Chicago pd in a stronger position than if it had wrapped the case too neatly: the show has room to keep Imani central, keep her paired against Voight, and keep the partnership’s mutual respect from becoming predictable.
The best read is simple. If the season wants its finale to land, it should lean into Imani as the new pressure point in Voight’s world rather than treat her as a temporary complication. This episode already did the harder part by making that relationship feel like the part worth carrying forward.
