Bridget Moynahan and Donnie Wahlberg are bringing another piece of Blue Bloods to Boston.
On the Friday, May 1 episode of CBS’s Boston Blue, Moynahan made her long-awaited return as Danny Reagan’s sister, Assistant District Attorney Erin Reagan. While Erin made a brief appearance in the spinoff’s premiere, her latest visit to Boston came with added responsibility — and a callback to the show that put them on the map.
The episode, “L’Dor Vador,” features Erin returning to help her brother and Det. Lena Silver (Sonequa Martin-Green) crack a case involving a serial killer named Abraham, who tells Danny that he’s already familiar with Erin.
When Erin makes her way to Beantown to confront him, the man admits to knowing the whereabouts of a missing Boston girl, before leading the siblings on a high-stakes journey to find exactly where he’s kept her captive.
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The storyline involving the Danny and his sister continues with the pair driving with the suspect — at his request — to gather intel on where the missing child could be. During the car ride, Abraham provokes Danny as he brings up his move to Boston, while Erin admits the Reagan family was “surprised” about the whole ordeal.
Eventually, Erin, Danny and the suspect wind up at a park full of abandoned busses. He lures them to an enclosed space where they can hear a little girl crying, only for Danny to bust the door open and find a boombox playing a recording of a cry on a loop. Abraham then has Danny and Erin right where he wants them and holds Danny at gunpoint.
That’s when Erin, who is holding her own gun up to the suspect, says a phrase that Blue Bloods fans should be all-too familiar with: “Please don’t hurt my family.”
Those words prompt Danny to drop to the ground, as Erin shoots Abraham and leads him right into BPD custody. Later in the episode, the pair explain the significance of the line. “Our dad drilled that phrase [“please don’t hurt my family”] into us as kids, and his dad taught him,” Erin said. “So anytime we heard it, we had to drop to the ground for cover.”
“I might live a few hundred miles away from New York,” Danny said. “But the Reagan traditions live on right here [his heart].”
The phrase is a callback to Blue Bloods. The siblings previously used the code when Erin was similarly in jeopardy in a season 4 episode, with Danny then saving her life. During a later family dinner scene, Erin and Danny confirmed that they had their dad Frank Reagan (Tom Selleck) to thank for preparing them.
“You used to drill that into us every time we went to the city,” Erin said, as Frank gave credit to their family patriarch.
“Actually, Pop invented it,” Frank said of his own dad, played by Len Cariou. “He used to do the same thing to me. … Please, God, we never [use it] again.”
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Elsewhere in the latest episode, Danny’s BPD partner Det. Lena Silver (Sonequa Martin-Green) is on a familial mission of her own after learning the true identity of her dad from her mom, DA Mae Silver (Gloria Reuben). As it turns out, her biological dad is now in law enforcement himself.
Things get dicey when Lena goes to visit him — eventually leading to the shocking discovery of a potential half-sister. She eventually comes face to face with the woman, who is married to an officer she went on a ride-along with, but decides it’s not the right time to introduce herself quite yet. This all goes down as her grandfather, Rev. Edwin Peters (Ernie Hudson), has a health scare and ultimately pulls through.
At the end of the episode, Danny and Erin discover the missing girl, while Lena and her mom still have some things to iron out.