Jay Harrington and Patrick St. Esprit are the only other stars from the original series announced to appear on the Shemar Moore-led spinoff.
The S.W.A.T. team is getting back together — at least, some of it is.
Jay Harrington and Patrick St. Esprit are set to reprise their roles as Sgt. David “Deacon” Kay and Cmdr. Robert Hicks for the pilot episode of the new spinoff series S.W.A.T. Exiles, Entertainment Weekly has confirmed. The pair will reunite with Shemar Moore, who’s anchoring the upcoming series as LAPD Sgt. Daniel “Hondo” Harrelson.
The pilot will also introduce series regulars Lucy Barrett (Deep Water, Charmed), Adain Bradley (Warfare, Tarot), Zyra Gorecki (La Brea), Freddy Miyares (When They See Us), and Ronen Rubinstein (9-1-1: Lone Star) to the S.W.A.T. universe; Kevin Tancharoen will direct the episode.
The news comes a few months after S.W.A.T. concluded its eighth and final season, and then news of the unexpected spinoff sparked controversy among both fans and the OG series stars, the latter of whom seemed to have been caught off guard by the project.
It’s unclear whether Harrington and St. Esprit will appear in further episodes of Exiles. Whether any of their other castmates will also make the jump to the new series remains to be seen as well.
The logline for Exiles explains that the spinoff picks up with Hondo “after a high-profile mission goes sideways,” forcing him out of retirement “to lead a last-chance experimental S.W.A.T. unit made up of untested, unpredictable young recruits. Hondo must bridge a generational divide, navigate clashing personalities, and turn a squad of outsiders into a team capable of protecting the city and saving the program that made him who he is.”
While the Exiles news initially brought relief for S.W.A.T. fans after they endured three cancellations and two revivals, things began to sour as some original cast members made it clear they were hurt by being left out.
In June, Harrington told TVLine that he was almost as surprised as fans, having received a last-minute call from Moore a day before the news broke.
“Shemar reached out to to all of us to say, ‘This is what’s going on…,’ and, you know, there’s talk that they’ll reach out to us about stuff,” Harrington said. “He wanted to be the one to tell us, and say ‘your reps will find out shortly.’ That’s when I told my reps, and they had no idea.”
Harrington continued, “Look, I’ll be very clear. I’ve been in this business for a long time. You don’t get ‘owed’ things just because you put in your time. … if there was any disappointment, it’s that when they announced it, we weren’t mentioned at all. That was it. And it was short-lived because I thought, ‘I’m not going to let that take away from what I know in my heart is eight years of putting in some great work.'”
Fellow S.W.A.T. alum David Lim was a bit more somber. Although he didn’t name Moore in an Instagram post addressing the spinoff, he alluded to the studio’s decision to begin a new chapter of the police procedural with only one star by arguing that the entirety of the S.W.A.T cast “still had more to give” and “more stories to tell.”
Lim said he was stung by the spinoff news and its exclusion of the expansive cast. “It was tough to see it announced just two days after our finale — with no mention of the cast who helped build S.W.A.T. from day one,” he wrote. “After 8 incredible seasons, it felt like we were brushed aside when there could’ve been a moment of reflection and recognition — for the people who built this show, and for the impact it had on so many.”
He thanked fans for sending messages of support amid the news and concluded, “I may not know what the future holds for Tan, but I couldn’t be more proud of what we created together — our cast, writers, producers, crew… our S.W.A.T. family. No version of this story can take that away.”
S.W.A.T. Exiles is scheduled to begin production later this month in Los Angeles, with Lucifer and The Expanse writer-producer Jason Ning serving as showrunner and executive producer.
