The ABC police procedural, The Rookie, is one of the most beloved shows on television at the moment. In recent times, the crime drama scored a major streaming win, as the show has amassed 12.817 billion minutes viewed between January and June 2026, according to Nielsen’s streaming data. Following on from one of ABC’s biggest finales with The Rookie Season 8, the series secured an early Season 9 renewal in April as we look forward to its return later next year. With well over 140 episodes of the show available, The Rookie has demonstrated incredible staying power even as the show looks towards further expansion.
The Rookie: North will serve as the second spin-off of the franchise, looking to succeed where its predecessor, the first short-lived offshoot back in 2022, The Rookie: Feds, which was cancelled after only one season, didn’t. Feds followed Special Agent Simone Clarke (Niecy Nash), the oldest rookie in the FBI Academy, but unlike the original series, the offshoot failed to impress. Last year, ABC decided to try again, officially handing out a pilot order for a new spin-off, with extensive work ongoing behind the scenes since then. The Rookie: North will follow a middle-aged man who joins the Pierce County Police Department as its oldest rookie after a traumatic home invasion. Insecure and Top Gun: Maverickstar Jay Ellis was, in November 2025, announced to have been cast in the series’ lead role as prospective rookie cop Alex Holland.
Since then, the series has worked to fill out its call sheet, adding Stranger Things favorite and This is Us alum Chris Sullivan to the cast as well. Froy Gutierrez (I Love LA), Janet Montgomery (New Amsterdam), Karen Fukuhara (The Boys), Mya Lowe (My Life with the Walter Boys), and Malik Watson were brought onboard in April 2026. Now, the show, which is set to premiere in 2027, has gone to bolster its ranks once more. According to Deadline, The Night Agent‘s Curtis Lum has been added to the cast in a recurring role. Lum is set to recur as Officer Charley Furst, a cheerful and relaxed officer who has a reputation for always finding the path of least resistance when it comes to the job.
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Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo
🍸James Bond
🏺Indiana Jones
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🔧John McClane
🎭Ethan Hunt
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01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
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02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
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03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
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04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
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05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
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06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
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07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
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08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
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09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
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10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
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Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
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Rambo
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
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Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
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John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
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Ethan Hunt
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
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Who Is Behind ABC’s ‘The Rookie: North’?
The Rookie creator, Alexi Hawley, returns to write and direct the series, which has Mark Gordon, Bill Norcross, and Michelle Chapman also executive producing. While still leading the original series as John Nolan, Nathan Fillion will also serve as executive producer on the new series, with series star Ellis serving as producer. Hopes are high for The Rookie: North, and while speaking with Collider’s Steven Weintraub at San Diego Comic-Con, series creator Hawley heightened it, teasing that a crossover with the upcoming spin-off is already being discussed, which would mark the franchise’s first crossover since The Rookie: Feds.
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“There might be one in the works, for sure. We started shooting Season 9 on Tuesday, this last week. We start shooting North in a few weeks, early August, so we’re already into scripts on everything, obviously. There are some thoughts being put to who might go north or come south or both.”
The Rookie streams on Hulu. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.
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Release Date
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October 16, 2018
Showrunner
Alexi Hawley
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Directors
Tori Garrett, Chi-Yoon Chung, Michael Goi, Sylvain White, Lisa Demaine, Lanre Olabisi, Bill Johnson, David McWhirter, Liz Friedlander, Daniel Willis, Toa Fraser, Anne Renton, Jon Huertas, Cherie Nowlan, TK Shom, Rob Seidenglanz, Valerie Weiss, Barbara Brown, Charissa Sanjarernsuithikul, SJ Main Muñoz, Nelson McCormick, Marcus Stokes, Adam Davidson, Anna Mastro
Writers
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Corey Miller, Bill Rinier, Zoe Cheng, Mary Trahan, Ally Seibert, Liz Alper, Nick Hurwitz, Racheal Seymour, Madeleine Coghlan, David Radcliff
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