‘Blue Bloods’ Boss Explains Why Frank Reagan Won’t Retire in Final Season
[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for the Blue Bloods Season 14 Part 1 finale, “The Heart of a Saturday Night.”]
Blue Bloods ended its Season 14 midseason finale on its usual positive note at the weekly Reagan family dinner. With Season 14 Part 1 now in the rearview mirror, showrunner Kevin Wade is giving a glimpse into what to expect in the final episodes set to premiere this fall on CBS, and he doesn’t think it’s likely that they’ll make Tom Selleck‘s Frank Reagan retire from his position as police commissioner.
Some characters this season, like the mayor, have hinted at a desire for a new commissioner, raising questions about whether Frank is going to stay in the job that defines his life. Even when he has difficult days like in Season 14 Episode 10, which showed Frank and his father (Len Cariou) at uncomfortable odds over a deceased cop’s use of the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, Frank doesn’t want to leave this work behind. And the show’s creators don’t want him to either.
“I’m pretty sure that Frank would stay in his job until the series ended,” Wade tells TV Insider. “We didn’t really pursue that avenue because the show is built on him being the police commissioner of New York City. So to take a detour during the last mile, if this is the last mile, I don’t know what he would be doing down at the hardware store or having coffee with old buddies during the day. I always have to look at stuff that generates stories. Police Commissioner of New York generates stories. He’s the CEO of 35,000 cops.”
Wade says he doesn’t envision what could happen in the series beyond what CBS has decided will be the final season. “We can’t even go” there because their focus is on creating a final season fans will enjoy, he says. Wade has seen the fan campaign hoping to “save Blue Bloods,” and to those fans he says, “God bless them. We take it as nothing but a compliment.”
CBS
“The Heart of a Saturday Night” challenged Danny (Donnie Wahlberg) and Gormley (Robert Clohessy) by putting them in a potential shootout with another cop, guest star Aidan Quinn‘s Gus Vanderlip. The detective had gone rogue out of anger that a serial rapist he had arrested two weeks prior was walking free because of the city’s bail reform law.
Frank and Henry’s rift over a late cop’s use of the 9/11 fund also challenged the family of officers. In Episode 9, an all-out fight broke out between uncle Jamie (Will Estes) and nephew Joe (Will Hochman), who Wade sees more as “brothers” now. Putting the Reagan family members at odds with each other, and then resolving their conflict, will continue throughout Blue Bloods‘ final season.
“We always have tried to strip away another layer of the characters,” says Wade. “Because we’re a closed-end procedural and we don’t have a serialized kind of storytelling, the only changes we can make are in the characters and their actual fears. I’m trying to write the best stories to put two or more Reagans in opposition to each other and try to resolve it at the end. And hopefully in the resolution, they reveal something new about themselves.”
Wade’s love of his cast shows in his next statement: “It’s a band that’s been touring together for 14 years, so sometimes you want to just go, you know what? You on the drums, you on the lead guitar. Go at it.”
Wade also reveals that he’s just finished laying out the Blue Bloods series finale, and he says they’re making sure there are no questions left unanswered.
“There won’t be any cliffhangers because there’s no cliff, but it ends,” Wade says. “Anything we would do that was an open question would by definition never be answered, so we’re trying to bring character stories to a close in that one. Obviously, we have some stories, some plot, but no, it’s designed as the last one.”
Blue Bloods, Final Season Premiere, Fall 2024, CBS
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