Did you hear? Blue Bloods may be getting a spinoff! The CBS cop drama is one of a handful of titles in consideration for a “franchise extension,” according to an executive at Paramount, CBS’ parent company.
Paramount Global co-CEO Brian Robbins said during a shareholders meeting on Tuesday, June 4 that “in TV, new franchise extensions are coming for Dexter, Billions, and Blue Bloods.” TV Insider confirmed the validity of Robbins’ statement.
With no other details about the potential extension of the series, we’re left with our own thoughts. Here are a handful of Blue Bloods spinoff ideas that we think we would be fun for fans to see.
Donnie Wahlberg and Marisa Ramirez’s detectives are a fan-favorite duo, and one that constantly has viewers wondering if they’re ever going to get together romantically. With Season 14 Part 2 being the final season of the original series, showrunner Kevin Wade doesn’t currently see enough time to make an interesting Danny and Baez romance.
“We put Jamie [Will Estes] and Eddie [Vanessa Ray] together a few years ago. I think the show would dip into parody if we had two of our cops marrying two of their partners who are getting into that,” Wade previously told TV Insider, adding that “there’s no great scenes in happy relationships.”
“The audience may think they want [a Danny and Baez romance], and perhaps they do, and perhaps I’m completely wrong,” he continued. “That’s always a strong possibility. But if we were to put them together and there’s a scene where they’re, I don’t know what, having dinner together and they’re happy, I don’t know what that is.”
Wade also sees Danny as a “loner” who’s “married to his work and who has the freedom and the latitude to do whatever he wants. Because unfortunately at home, there’s nothing much there.” It’s true that there’s not enough time to meaningfully change all of that in the final season, but a spinoff would crack open this possibility.
Some of the most beloved law enforcement partnerships on TV also have a romantic spin to them, like the will they-won’t they dynamic between Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler on Law & Order: SVU and the heat between Mulder and Scully on The X-Files. Allowing this fan-favorite pair to explore their onscreen chemistry as they work out how to balance detective perils with their personal lives may justify the potential spinoff in the eyes of fans. Wahlberg and Ramirez seem keen to get these two together as well.
“Donnie and Marissa, no matter what we write, manage to find ways to show that the two like each other more than as partners,” Wade said. “Let’s put it at that. They’re very good at engineering a subtextual relationship that the audience clearly gets.”
There also doesn’t necessarily need to be a romance for a Danny and Baez spinoff to be entertaining. Their work developments are often some of the show’s most high-stakes scenarios. A spinoff would allow them to go deeper into this work, and if it were a streaming exclusive show, the plot could get even more gritty.
