The Rookie franchise took a hit with its initial spin-off. While the flagship series starring Nathan Fillion is still riding high in popularity, culminating in impressive streaming views, the follow-up attempt at a spin-off did not fare as well. After one season, The Rookie: Feds was canceled and ABC’s hopes of creating a police procedural franchise were momentarily dashed. But with a second spin-off currently in the works, hopes for a Rookie universe have been renewed. Here’s where the franchise should go in the future.
The Rookie is stacked full of characters who have already won the affection of viewers. A whole fandom revolves around the characters as well as their effusive reactions to their relationships (Chenford anyone?). This spirited environment could lay the groundwork for the series to expand by creating a world with an already familiar character at the forefront. If you’re going to make a spin-off, there’s one top-of-the-line cop whose story is begging to be explored: Sergeant Wade Grey.
A Wade Grey Prequel Could Provide the Perfect Spin-Off
As the senior officer, Sergeant Wade Grey (Richard T. Jones) has the most potential in creating a spin-off series. He is a familiar character who has a great degree of likeability as shown in a recent Collider poll. A strong and fair leader, Grey is a charismatic figure of whom so much is still unknown. A prequel series set during Grey’s rookie year and following his rise up the ranks would be a perfect companion piece to The Rookie, providing insight into the character that we have come to know, while offering a capsule look at police enforcement in the ’90s. Period crime dramas have certainly proven to be a fascinating spin on the standard procedural. A Rookie take on the ’90s could provide a stylish twist to the series while still remaining in the same core universe.
A spin-off focusing on Grey would allow viewers to learn even more about his character. He is familiar and has long enough longevity in the police force that the storylines will not trip over themselves and become redundant by being too near the main timeline. Although it may be a challenge to ensure the present Grey doesn’t change to conform to the filled-in history a new series might create, the dual looks could give greater depth to his character. How and when he met his wife, his relationship with fellow rookies, perhaps an introduction to a cop that inspired him to be the leader that he is today; the series could offer the blueprints into the character and stories that we later come to know.
A Series with Massive Cross-Over Potential
A Wade Grey expansion of the series could serve to offer further depth to the world of The Rookie. The series is fun, stylish, and currently cruising towards a recently approved eighth season. But while all of this is stellar, a Grey prequel could offer the series grounding through history. Using Grey as the anchor connecting the two timelines could give the world a sense of longevity; a realness of time vaulted where the station, the city, and the people are shown to be even more complex than we think.
Although Easter eggs won’t build a show, the series could play with time to have something from a Grey prequel episode serve as a mention for a character in The Rookie. The simple act of showing the touchstone in both timelines could give an implied fullness to the off-screen years in between. This could make for some truly wonderful crossover episodes where a character appears in Grey’s story and later comes back in the events of The Rookie. Adding depth to The Rookie and importance to the Grey timeline would elevate both series for a win.
So far, these are just hopes as ABC has announced that a second spin-off series of The Rookie was on its way, and Grey’s not it. Developed by Lionsgate and 20th Television, the Rookie spin-off would take place in Washington state and would follow a male cop “stepping into a new phase of his life.” The description sounds familiar. But then again, it is the same concept as The Rookie and The Rookie: Feds, and the varying success of those two shows proves that the future of its longevity may well lie in timing and execution. The series is being written by Alexi Hawley with Nathan Fillion and original Rookie inspiration Bill Norcross serving as executive producers.
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