The upcoming eighth season of The Rookie is taking a big swing for the series, as the cast travels overseas to Prague, Czech Republic. Details are not completely clear, but footage from the Season 8 trailer that was shown during The Rookie panel at the 2025 San Diego Comic-Con depicted Los Angeles Police Department Officer John Nolan (Nathan Fillion) and his wife, firefighter EMT and Army Reserve lieutenant Bailey Nune (Jenna Dewan), getting wrapped up in a case involving the returning Monica Stevens (Bridget Regan). The exciting, globe-hopping premise allows The Rookie to steal a page from the NCIS playbook, with the new spin-off series, NCIS: Tony & Ziva, depicting fan-favorite couple, Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) and Ziva David (Cote de Pablo) trekking across Europe for a dangerous mission. It’s time to unpack why it’s so exciting that The Rookie is taking its production overseas for the upcoming Season 8 premiere.
Nathan Fillion Channels His Inner ‘James Bond’ in Season 8
The Rookie Season 8 footage shown at SDCC depicts Monica assisting the authorities in Prague, helping them apprehend a very dangerous arms dealer, which brings her into contact with John and Bailey. Of course, Bailey is less than pleased that Monica got John shot during the events of the Season 6 finale, “Escape Plan.” Monica insists that John’s gunshot wound was not her intention, while John humorously retorts [paraphrasing], “Tell that to my ass.” During the panel, Fillion also teased a James Bond 007-style storyline in the Prague adventure, stating, “In the first episode, we go to Prague and [John] becomes James Bond in the episode,” which sounds exciting. Season 7 featured a fun homage to Keanu Reeves and his classic 1994 action movie, Speed, during the appropriately titled episode, “Speed.”
Hopefully, the Prague storyline slated for the Season 8 debut pays similar homage to the James Bond movie style, with an analogous title tribute to boot. It also comes at a time when the new NCIS: Tony & Ziva series takes Tony and Ziva across Europe, including Paris and Budapest, for their latest adventure. Along with John’s tease about Bond in the plot, hopefully, John and Bailey can follow in Tony and Ziva’s footsteps for some action-packed, romance-fueled thrills. John and Bailey definitely deserve a break because it seems like disaster strikes whenever the couple goes out of town. Case in point, they were nearly killed by a psychotic killer during their honeymoon in the sixth season episode, “Trouble in Paradise.” When they visited John’s hometown in the fifth season episode, “The Con,” they ran afoul of some drug dealers with whom John’s late mother, Evelyn (Frances Fisher), did business. Obviously, some chaos will take place in Prague, but once it’s wrapped up, showrunner Alexi Hawley should allow the couple to have a nice, pleasant dinner date or a spa day for the remainder of their trip. John and Bailey are way overdue for a win after all the madness they have experienced in the last two seasons.
‘The Rookie’ Finally Shoots Overseas for the First Time
The upcoming Season 8 premiere set in Prague presents an exciting development for The Rookie because the long-running series has stayed primarily in and around Los Angeles for its first seven seasons. True, Nyla Harper (Mekia Cox) and John did fly with the FBI agents to Argentina for the Season 6 finale, but that was mostly kept to a single action sequence. It’s evident that the scene was not shot on location in Argentina, but rather, likely filmed in Southern California, doubling as the South American country. The Season 4 premiere also took the LAPD officers to Guatemala on a rescue mission for Angela Lopez (Alyssa Diaz), but the sequences for Sandra de La Cruz’s (Camille Guaty) compound were shot in Malibu. The Rookie finally shooting a storyline on location outside the United States marks an ambitious new step for the hit series. Hopefully, The Rookie hits this storyline out of the park, increasing the potential for future episodes or storylines that might take the officers of the Mid-Wilshire Division outside of Los Angeles.
The Mid-Wilshire Division’s friendly relationship with the FBI and special supervisory agent Matthew Garza (Felix Solis) had already allowed John and Nyla to venture outside the country once before for a recon mission involving Monica and a key witness, Dr. Blair London (Danielle Campbell), who Monica attempted to trade to the international criminal Jakob Olmstead (Casper Andreas). Basically, the officers of the Mid-Wilshire Division have friends at the FBI who probably pulled the strings to get them to Prague in Season 8, due to the division’s history of investigating Monica, who, up until recently, was a fugitive. Ultimately, the Mid-Wilshire Division’s connections with FBI agents from The Rookie: Feds provide an organic narrative means for the characters to travel across the globe easily.
‘The Rookie’ Going Overseas Presents Fresh New Storylines
With the show embarking on its eighth season, The Rookie is expanding its production for a globe-trotting storyline, which presents an opportunity for cool and refreshing new stories with a wider scope. The Rookie has been building to an event such as this for a while, such as when the Federal Reserve heist early in Season 6 in “Strike Back” hinted at the involvement of a much bigger crime lord who was bankrolling the perpetrator in the heist, Boyd Taylor (Kristian Brunn). The mysterious off-screen crime lord is also connected to Monica. It would be great if the arms dealer Monica is offering to expose in Season 8 turns out to be the unseen crime lord from Season 6 because it would finally wrap up one of the show’s biggest loose story threads. Nevertheless, The Rookie has been building up to a big epic storyline such as this, and now it’s finally time for the main course.
The escalation for the show has been rising for a while, and the overseas adventure promises a great opportunity for viewers to see their favorite characters in a brand-new setting. Hopefully, it pays off, so The Rookie can try unique plots and locations such as the Prague mission in the near future. The worst part is that we have to wait until next year to see what will happen. ABC’s habit of waiting to debut a new season of The Rookie until mid-season really needs to end, but that is a topic for another time.
