Crossovers are arguably one of the most exciting aspects of network TV, and ABC has taken advantage of this over the years. However, the network likely won’t jump on the perfect opportunity to connect two of its more popular police procedural TV series in its upcoming 2025–2026 season. Of course, one should never say never, but the odds are quite low.
Will Trent & The Rookie Return In Early 2026
The 2 Police Procedurals Should Continue Airing Back-To-Back
Will Trent and The Rookie have aired back-to-back on Tuesday nights for a couple of years now. They don’t take place in the same universe (yet), but ABC is clearly happy with how well they performed together in the past. To continue their success, the network is replicating Will Trent and The Rookie’s most recent release schedule for the 2025–2026 season.
Reports confirm that both Will Trent season 4 and The Rookie season 8 will contain 18 episodes each, which are expected to air weekly with little to no interruptions (barring presidential addresses or other unforeseen programming interference).
ABC is holding both cop shows for midseason, meaning they won’t return until early 2026. Since Will Trent season 3 and The Rookie season 7 premiered in January 2025, one can assume that seasons 4 and 8 of the respective series will follow suit and debut in January 2026. When they do, it would be wise for ABC to plan a crossover for them.
A Crossover Between Will Trent & The Rookie Would Benefit Both Shows
A Will Trent & The Rookie Crossover Certainly Wouldn’t Hurt
Connecting Will Trent and The Rookie feels like a no-brainer. They perform well enough on their own, but a crossover event would surely draw more eyeballs to both TV shows (and increase their ratings, which should sound enticing to ABC’s executives). Ideally, the crossover would be a big two-episode event that features almost every cast member from Will Trent and The Rookie.
Given their premises, a Will Trent and The Rookie crossover would be easy. At least when it comes to storytelling. The Will Trent characters could travel to LA, where their suspect has fled, forcing them to work alongside the LAPD (more specifically, the Rookie characters who work at the LAPD’s Mid-Wilshire Patrol Division). Perhaps this isn’t realistic, but these are fictional shows.
This idea might be too predictable, but the Will Trent and The Rookie writers could come up with something much more daring and surprising. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. Just the prospect of a collaboration between Will Trent and The Rookie is exciting. They are already triumphs, but ABC could bank more on their success with a crossover.
Why Will Trent & The Rookie Likely Won’t Collaborate
There Have Been No Rumblings About A Possible Crossover
Even though ABC would surely benefit from connecting Will Trent and The Rookie, it’s unlikely to come to fruition. For starters, there have been no rumors about such a thing happening. Both crime dramas have already started filming their respective seasons, and one would think that a crossover between the two would have been leaked by now, or at least teased.
A crossover also wouldn’t work logistically for ABC, seeing as The Rookie is filmed in Los Angeles, while Will Trent’s production is based out of Atlanta. The network might decide that the costs outweigh the benefits. Paying to send actors across the country to appear in a different TV show than their own does seem like it would cause a headache.
ABC was willing to briefly move The Rookie season 8’s production to Prague, though. So, perhaps flying the cast and crew to Atlanta isn’t as big a deal as it’s made out to be. However, it’s still rather unlikely, especially because ABC has probably already spent a lot of money to send the cast and crew of The Rookie to Europe.
After canceling The Rookie: Feds, ABC has a new spinoff of The Rookie, titled The Rookie North, in the works. Its release date is unknown, as of the writing of this article, but it’s set to follow a character tentatively named Alex, a rookie cop in Washington state.
Another reason why fans shouldn’t be holding their breath for a collaboration between Will Trent and The Rookie is the latter’s experience with crossovers. ABC could barely produce a well-executed crossover between The Rookie and its spinoff, The Rookie: Feds. So, it stands to reason that connecting it to a cop show that’s not a part of its franchise will also fail.
The most that anyone can hope for is something akin to what 9-1-1 and Doctor Odyssey did during the 2024–2025 network TV season. A Will Trent main character could travel to LA for a case and bump into Nolan, Lucy, Harper, or any of the other Rookie figures. We’ll take anything we can get from ABC at this point.
