Jennifer Esposito left Blue Bloods in 2012 after playing the dynamic Jackie Curatola for three seasons. Her departure from the CBS police procedural was something of a dramatic affair as Esposito had been unceremoniously fired. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Esposito had been given doctor’s orders to take a week off work because of her celiac disease, but CBS had been convinced it was a scheme to get more money.
Considering those circumstances, most Blue Bloods viewers assumed they would never see Jackie again. But in a truly surprising turn of events, Esposito reprised her role as Jackie in Season 13 — over a decade after she departed. Jackie returned in Blue Bloods‘ Season 13 finale and with a new job title at that. This means Esposito was finally able to give the character she was so abruptly parted from the closure that Jackie and her fans have always deserved. With the series now over, though, how did the show say goodbye to Jackie?
How Jackie Left Blue Bloods Was a Failure
Jackie Curatola was introduced as the partner of Donnie Wahlberg’s character, Danny Reagan, in the fourth episode of Blue Bloods ever, “Officer Down.” The pair had a strong rapport and a powerful friendship that was central to the first three seasons of Blue Bloods. Jennifer Esposito appeared in 46 episodes of Blue Bloods before her departure. In Season 2, Episode 11, “Mercy,” when Jackie’s car followed a suspect’s into a river, Danny attempted to save her by diving in. However, he couldn’t find her and assumed she had died. His devastated reaction to Jackie’s death highlighted her importance to him. Later in the episode, Danny discovers Jackie had actually been taken hostage and risks his own life in a standoff to save her. The two of them had the kind of partnership that every TV police procedural wants.
A fascinating aspect of their partnership, though, was that Danny and Jackie clearly had a strong ROMANTIC chemistry, as well, which was a problem for the show from a narrative perspective, since Danny Reagan was, of course, also happily married to his wife, Linda Reagan (Amy Carlson), on the series. TV shows are desperate to find actors who have great chemistry together, so when they find them, it is frustrating for the producers to not be able to get them together due to the setup of the series.
The Jackie/Danny partnership ended in Blue Bloods Season 3, Episode 7, “Nightmares,” one of the saddest episodes of the series. Jackie was shot on the job and began to question her career as a detective. Her frustration with the bureaucratic nature of the NYPD fueled her uncertainty as she decided whether to continue with the job. When Danny visited Jackie in the hospital, she told him she had decided to resign. That farewell scene was brief and unsatisfying, especially for fans who had become attached to Jackie. While she may have had her ups and downs with the NYPD, she loved being a detective, so quitting did not feel true to her character. The only positive about it was that Blue Bloods didn’t have Jackie die as the show did with Danny’s wife, Linda, later in the series.
Clearly, the show felt that Wahlberg played well with a female partner, as the show remarkably paired him with THREE more female partners for the rest of Season 3 (and actually, before Esposito joined the show, Danny ALSO had a female partner. In fact, due to episodes airing out of order, Danny technically had a female partner, Yvonna Kopacz Wright’s Ava Hotchkiss, in the two episodes BEFORE Jackie joined the show, and one episode AFTER Jackie joined the show, as episode 5 presumably aired out of order). Finally, in episode 17, Danny was paired with Marisa Ramirez’s Maria Baez, who remained Danny’s partner for the rest of the series.
Blue Bloods Makes Up for Jackie’s Lackluster Send-Off
On April 13th, TVLine broke the news of Jennifer Esposito’s return to Blue Bloods, alongside another long-absent cast member. The reveal confirmed that Jackie had returned to police work — and showed her wearing a jacket that said “Chief of Police.” This promotion is much more appropriate for the character than a quick resignation. She was a skilled detective who put her all into police work, such as when Jackie went undercover to help stop a serial killer in Season 2, Episode 7, “Lonely Hearts Club.” Blue Bloods fans could feel better knowing that in her time off-screen, Jackie persevered with her career despite her previous misgivings and rose through the ranks.
Jackie’s resignation in Season 3 felt like a defeat, but her becoming Chief of Police felt like a triumph. It represented the culmination of her hard work and dedication. The position also gives her the authority she previously was frustrated by not having. By not only re-introducing Jackie but doing so in this way, Blue Bloods was undoing the missteps it made in 2012. Instead of tearing the character down, the series is building her up, the way it should have in the first place.
Interestingly, a similar thing occurred in Season 9. After a rookie cop named Rachel Witton (Laura Patton) was fired in Season 8 after a controversy that appeared to show her unfairly arresting a Hispanic man, New York Police Commissioner Frank Reagan (Tom Selleck) rehired Witton in Season 9, explaining that he never should have fired her. As it turned out, Blue Bloods star, Tom Selleck, objected to the plot point, and had the show’s writers reverse it, explaining, “After we did the show, it’s a very good episode, [Frank] has to fire [Witten] and he deeply regrets that. But it stuck with me, Tom, and it stuck with Frank. Trying to put that right was a personal journey for Frank. There’s no real way to do it, and [Frank] said, ‘I don’t care; we’re going to do it.’”
Blue Bloods is a show that isn’t afraid to revisit old plots, and to put right what once went wrong (apologies to Quantum Leap for stealing their bit)!
Jackie and Danny Teamed Up in the Season 13 Finale
True to the promo, Jackie’s return in Season 13 of Blue Bloods was a testament to her character. The reunion between Jackie and Danny was brought on by a killing spree by Dr. Leonard Walker (Mather Zickel), a psychiatrist that Danny had discovered was a killer earlier in Season 13. Jackie was now the Chief of Police in a small town in Suffolk County, and although Danny wants to take on the case for himself, Jackie insists that she tag along since she has victims of her own in her town.
Walker had been recently released from prison on account of too little evidence. The pair went searching for Walker’s deceased mother after finding a lock of her hair, and she’s found in the walls of an old home under her birth name. After Jackie left the scene to go home, Walker broke into her house and attacked her, fleeing after Jackie fought him off. The ending of the Season 13 finale left Jackie and Danny on a bittersweet but open-ended note. Jackie says that the case reminded her of the good and bad of the job; she hates seeing the helpless victims dying by violent ends and things getting personal with the suspect, but she loved working with Danny. In the end, she claims she found her happy place, as has Danny, and they go their separate ways.
How did Jackie say goodbye on Blue Bloods?
It wouldn’t take long for Esposito to return to the show, as Jackie made her next appearance, which turned out to be her LAST appearance, in the second episode of Season 14, which ended up being the final season of the show (the series finale of Blue Blood aired on December 13, 2024). The episode, titled “Dropping Bombs,” resolved the Dr. Walker plotline. After Walker escaped in Season 13, he was arrested, but there was again insufficient evidence of his guilt.
Danny tried to get Walker to confess by interrogating him, but Walker instead tried to bait Danny with personal quesitons about his life, using his skills as a psychotherapist to get at Danny by also pointing out some things that the audience had all noticed years ago. You see, while Danny had great chemistry with Jackie, he also had great chemistry with Baez, and now that Linda had been long written out of the show, some fans wanted Danny and Baez to date. So Walker asks Danny why he hasn’t dated anyone since his wife died five years earlier:
Have you ever fantasized about your partner, Baez? Or your old partner? You seem to have a lot of chemistry with her, too.
Danny blows him off, but amusingly, Baez pretty clearly acts jealous of Jackie when she learns that Danny had been sharing some information about the case with Jackie without telling her about it. She acts like it is just professional jealousy, but anyone with eyes could tell that it sure looks a lot more like she is jealous of the possible romantic bond between Danny and Jackie.
At the end of the episode, once Walker was brought to justice for good, Jackie says her final goodbyes to Danny, and to the show. He asks her if she has to go back to her job in Long Island, wondering if she doesn’t miss working in New York City. She tells him, “Yeah, there’s, uh… there’s really no place for me here.” After he presses her, she tells him that she misses Danny, not the job. She then adds, “And anyway, you know, you and Baez, you work well together.” Danny retorts, “We do. You and I do, too..” She then tells him, “Yeah, but being here, it kind of muddies the waters a bit, I think.” She leaves, and Danny jokes that maybe one day he’ll ask HER for a job in Long Island.
The scene really felt like not only a farewell for Jackie, but also sort of her blessing the romantic pairing of Danny and Baez over the possible romantic pairing of Danny and Jackie. It was sort of like her passing the proverbial torch to Baez. And sure enough, in the series finale of Blue Bloods, Danny finally asks Baez out on a date. That romance could have been with Jackie, but at least Jackie got to make the decision to leave herself, and didn’t see Danny actively choose Baez over her.
Blue Bloods ended up doing right by Jackie, with both the promotion to Chief of Police, and also to let her wrap up any unresolved romantic tension between her and Danny. She left the show on a fine note.
