Sad news, The Rookie fans! You’ll have to wait for the eighth season for a bit longer, as Nathan Fillion and others will only return in midseason 2026.
Nathan Fillion’s The Rookie has been renewed for an eighth season, giving us more adventures from John Nolan and the cops at LAPD Mid-Wilshire. However, ABC’s new update is upsetting for fans who were hoping to see the series back soon. The network won’t air the new season until mid-season 2026.
Fans expressed their disappointment with this decision on social media. The new season is expected to follow a schedule similar to that of the current season, which aired from January 2025 to May 2025. The finale of Season 7 aired on May 13, with a bit of a disappointing reaction from fans.
The Rookie Season 8 update does not make fans happy
Nathan Fillion’s The Rookie saw his character, John Nolan, join the LAPD as the oldest rookie. The premise of the show was interesting as it dealt with Nolan’s struggles to get through his training period as a rookie. As the show progressed, he went on to become a respectable police officer in the department.
The show just wrapped its seventh season and has already been renewed for an eighth season. However, fans aren’t happy when ABC recently announced when the series would be back on television. They confirmed that the eighth season will premiere in midseason 2026. They shared a list of the shows airing this fall on Instagram, and The Rookie was notably absent from it.
The network intends to bring back Abbott Elementary, 9-1-1, and its spinoff 9-1-1: Nashville this fall. Fans were disappointed not to see The Rookie in the list. According to TVLine, both this series and Will Trent, with its fourth season, will be back next January for an uninterrupted run. Fillion’s series is expected to have 18 episodes in this eighth season.
Fans complained on social media platforms and wanted the network to correct its mistake. One of the users wrote below the Instagram post, “You still have time to fix this and add the rookie back to the fall schedule.” Another fan commented, “ABC why do you hate the rookie so much?” Several fans on Reddit also commented against this move.
The Rookie aired its Season 7 finale on May 13th, titled The Good, The Bad, and the Oscar. The episode saw the return of recurring villain character Oscar Hutchinson, played by Matthew Glave.
Nathan Fillion’s reduced presence is also irritating fans
Over seven seasons and 115 episodes of The Rookie, fans have seen Nathan Fillion at his best as the rookie-turned-training officer John Nolan. Fillion showcased both his dramatics and his comedy skills in the role, which felt tailor-made for the actor. It is his second time playing a lead in a police procedural after Castle.
However, one fan on Reddit aired one grievance about Fillion’s character in the recent episodes of Season 7 of the show. The fan shared that the recent episodes sparingly used the titular character and focused more on the other characters. The fan shared that Nolan was brought in to portray his family life with Bailey or to help some other character.
It could be due to the fact that Fillion was busy with his new role in the DCU. It is also possible that his reduced role on the screen was owed to his behind-the-scenes role. He is also an executive producer of the series alongside showrunner Alexi Hawley. He also served the role of exec producer in the spin-off show The Rookie: Feds, which was cancelled after a single season.
The Rookie is now available for streaming on Hulu in the United States.
