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Big family dinners are a tradition on “Blue Bloods” © CBS
Soon it will be time to say goodbye to the Reagans. The series “Blue Bloods” is saying goodbye to the screen. Now the series creator has revealed how he prepared for writing the final episode – and what we can expect.
Blue Bloods showrunner Kevin Wade took inspiration from the endings of other iconic series, including Cheers and The Sopranos, when planning the series finale. Last November, it was announced that Blue Bloods would end with a split 14th season. The first 10 episodes aired from February to May, while the final eight episodes will air in the fall, beginning on Friday, October 18.
Wade revealed in a detailed interview with TVLinethat he had been thinking about the series finale for years. “When you’re on this for 14 years, at least four or five of those years you think, ‘This could be the last season,’ just as a statistical game,” he explained.
How did the series creator prepare for the series finale?
He often discussed the end of the series with his long-time colleague Siobhan Byrne O’Connor. After the future of “Blue Bloods” was decided, Wade delved deep into the finales of other long-running series. “I rewatched the series finales of great shows like ‘M*A*S*H’, ‘Cheers’ and ‘Mary Tyler Moore’, and of course ‘The Sopranos’,” said Wade. “I watched a lot of them to find out what they had in common. And what they had in common was that they made a great show and then in the last few minutes they took a little turn towards ‘This is the last show too.'”
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What can we expect from the “Blue Bloods” series finale?
Wade stressed that he wanted to avoid presenting a retrospective of the show’s successes because viewers just want to see a really good episode of the show they love. That’s also how he approached Blue Bloods’ own series finale, which airs on either the first or second Friday in December.
“For me, the best season finales of ‘Blue Bloods’ were the ones where we found a crime or a situation where all of the Reagans could work together – separately, but together,” Wade explains. “And that’s exactly what we did for the series finale. We have four different stories, all aimed at solving or preventing the same crimes.”
