THE ROOKIE Starring Nathan Fillion Renewed for Season 9 at ABC
ABC has renewed the popular cop drama The Rookie for a ninth season, making it the third longest-running ABC drama series after Grey’s Anatomy, which is headed into Season 23, and NYPD Blue, which ran for 12 seasons.
The show has become a popular source for TikTok clips, and its teen viewership has boosted its ratings. The series stars Nathan Fillion as the title “rookie,” and it comes from creator Alexi Hawley, Lionsgate TV and 20th TV.
The Rookie is tied with ABC’s 1981 primetime soap Dynasty and 1965 police procedural The F.B.I., which also aired for nine seasons. (9-1-1 is going to Season 10 but the series aired on Fox for its first six seasons before moving to ABC.) The Rookie is reportedly nowhere near done, gunning for the shows that are ahead of it on the list.
“So far, the mindset across the board is, as Melissa O’Neil said, ‘Let’s Grey’s Anatomy this thing,'” Hawley told Deadline, quoting one of The Rookie’s stars.
“I think everybody is having a good time, it’s a cast that truly loves each other and enjoys coming to work, they get to do fun stuff every day. And at this point, heading into Season 9, I don’t feel like we’re anywhere near out of ideas.
“Part of that is we’re not a procedural where I have to come up with a body drop every week. We really can reinvent ourselves a lot, and that helps with not feeling like you’re running out of story. Every time you bring in a new rookie or a new character, that also changes things. So, yeah, I would do this until they turn the lights out.”
Defying gravity, The Rookie Season 8 premiere was up from last season’s premiere in MP+3 viewership, ranking as the show’s biggest debut on streaming and among Top 5 ABC premieres of all time. The series is having its most watched season on streaming and closed out 2025 as the top broadcast show among teens.
“It’s been a great season, I’ll put it that way,” Hawley said. “I feel that our popularity has never been higher, which is great; we spoke at the beginning of the season about what going to Prague was like in terms of seeing the international appeal of our show as well. I’ve been feeling like we’ve been putting out really strong episodes all season, and people have been showing up.”
As for why viewers keep showing up, “I do think that ultimately the success of the show is partly because from week to week, the audience really doesn’t know what version of The Rookie they’re going to get. Is it going to be a big fun event in the episode? Is it going to be more comedic or romantic or scary? I like switching things up, I like that sort of energy of it.”
The Rookie’s overall Season 8 performance has not been impacted significantly by the series’ move from the post-High Potential Tuesday 10 PM slot to Mondays 10 PM to make room for new series R.J. Decker, with streaming making up for the linear viewership dip that followed.
Hawley found a silver lining in the relocation, noting that Fillion’s previous ABC crime procedural, Castle, on which Hawley served as executive producer/co-showrunner, spent its entire eight-season run in the Monday 10 PM slot.
Next season, The Rookie may be tasked with launching a new ABC series, spinoff The Rookie: North, currently in the pilot stage and looking promising.
I love this show, and I look forward to seeing it continue.