‘Blue Bloods’ Showrunner Breaks Down Season 8 Finale Twist

Blue Bloods’ season 8 finale ended with one of the series biggest twists: Jamie Reagan (Will Estes) and Eddie Janko (Vanessa Ray) are officially engaged. Now, the series’ showrunner is breaking down why they finally made the bold move to put “Jamko” together at last.

In an interview with TV Line, showrunner Kevin Wade revealed the Blue Bloods team’s reasoning behind the engagement, which really came down to their stories reaching their obvious conclusion.

“It was clear from the start that the two actors had great chemistry and that all our writers were able to write to that chemistry, and then at a certain point in a long-running show, which this has certainly become, you do need to change things up,” Wade said. “We played the ‘Will they/won’t they?,’ the ‘Which one’s going to get seriously involved with someone else?,’ and then I thought, ‘This isn’t ringing true anymore.’”

It was also a matter of timing. Wade said they decided that the only waty to make the scene work was to have it be the final moment of the season, with Eddie joining the family dinner table.

“What we had to really figure out was, how do we do this without throwing out the baby with the bath water?” Wade said. “There are no good scenes about happy couples, so we have this one finale to have this one moment where you go, ‘Oh, that’s great, they finally recognize what the audience has known for three seasons.’ Really, the last scene of the last episode of the season seemed like the only place to do it, so that’s the ‘Why now?’”

As for keeping the big twist a secret, Wade thanked CBS‘ marketing team for keeping the reveal under wraps. The team wanted to end on a reveal that would be much less devastating than the death of Linda Reagan (Amy Carlson) in the season premiere.

“CBS has been great. I said, ‘You know, we had to surprise people with a not-pleasant surprise [Linda’s death] in the season premiere, so if we have a pleasant surprise in the finale, let’s at least endeavor to keep it secret,” Wade said. “And it looks like we have, which is great.”

CBS has already renewed Blue Bloods for a ninth season, which will debut some time in the fall TV season.

Blue Bloods airs Fridays at 9 p.m. CT on CBS.

Photo Credit: CBS / Craig Blankenhorn