On December 13, 2024, the Reagan family offers its final salute as Blue Bloods ends its 14-year command of Friday nights. The well-loved CBS family cop series—which still holds a seat among the top 10 broadcast series—concludes with Season 14.

Below, showrunner Kevin Wade, who’s been a part of Blue Bloods since its series premiere on September 24, 2010, offers TV Insider a preview of the highly-anticipated ending.

When did you begin to formulate your plan for the series finale?

Kevin Wade: Well, we had a whole season where we knew this was the last lap, so we all started talking collectively pretty early, and it was decided that Siobhan [Byrne O’Connor] and I would write the series finale. And so we started months before, talking like, what are the show’s greatest hits? What are the things that we love to do, the audience seems to love, and how can we do them in a new and fresh way, but pay some attention to what’s worked in the past?

What are the most important stories and scenes that had to be part of the series finale?

[Co-writer] Siobhan Byrne O’Connor and I decided early that the finale that would work best for our wonderful large cast were stories where all of them are in pursuit of [the same] syndicate. So while each main character would have a separate alley to walk down, they were working toward finding the same criminal. That makes for the most propulsive way we can tell all four stories at once. And of course, the family dinner scene took a lot of attention just in terms of who would be there and why and would anything be promised or revolved.

Besides the usual weekly dinner crew, what visitors can you tease show up at the Sunday table?