Danny Reagan is officially coming back.
On Feb. 18, CBS announced a straight-to-series order for a Blue Bloods spinoff with Donnie Wahlberg to reprise his role as the beloved detective.
The series, with the working title of Boston Blue, will see Wahlberg’s Danny, a long-time NYPD officer, take a position with Boston PD. “Once in Boston, he is paired with detective Lena Peters, the eldest daughter of a prominent law enforcement family,” per the official description.
Boston Blue is a “universe expansion” of Blue Bloods, according to CBS, and will air in the 2025-2026 broadcast season.
News of a franchise expansion was first confirmed in June, as co-CEO Brian Robbins announced in a Paramount stockholders meeting that “new franchise extensions are coming” for several Paramount TV shows, including Blue Bloods. The spin-off news comes just two months after the long-running CBS series aired its final episode on Dec. 14.
The network had announced the show’s fourteenth season would be its last in November 2023, though star Tom Selleck and his castmates held out hope that they’d change their mind.
“We’re the third-highest scripted show in all of broadcast. We’re winning the night. All the cast wants to come back. And I can tell you this: we aren’t sliding off down a cliff. We’re doing good shows, and still holding our place,” he told CBS News in May 2024 as he begged the network to “come to their senses.”
Wahlberg, who played Selleck’s son on the show, didn’t shy away from how emotional Blue Bloods’ ending was for him.In a June Instagram post, the New Kids on the Block singer said he didn’t “have the words to describe how I feel about today, or the last 14 years on this special Blue Bloods journey.”“To the cast, the crew, the guest cast, every background actor, writer, producer and every member of every single dept — thank you. To the people of New York, in every neighborhood and borough, thank you for always showing your love. To the NYPD, thank you for your support and sacrifice, I hope we did you proud,” he wrote, before sharing a message with the fans, calling their support “one of the great blessings of my life.”
Wahlberg later told Variety that he “couldn’t turn off the tears for another probably two days” after the show wrapped, and said that a poem delivered by Selleck, 80, was the nail in the coffin.
“Literally, my life passed before my eyes,” he said of Selleck’s reading of “Love Is Not All” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. “I was listening to his voice mesmerize this room and thinking about what a magical journey, and what a gift that this boy, who didn’t know where his next meal was going to come from half the time, in this scrappy family, who grew up watching this man on TV, is sitting next to him, sharing this magical moment of his wisdom and grace.”
