'Blue Bloods' Showrunner Hints at Handling Coronavirus in Future Episode

Before the Blue Bloods Season 10 finale aired on CBS Friday night, the cast and crew got together for a special virtual family dinner. During the event, star Donnie Wahlberg asked showrunner Kevin Wade if the show would explore the coronavirus pandemic in a future episode. Since Blue Bloods has a history of taking inspiration from real-life events, Wade suggested it would be hard to avoid the subject.

"I don't think you can run far away from it," Wade said, reports Deadline. "It's something I've been talking about with our writers, with [showrunners] Warren Leight from [Law & Order: SVU] and Glenn [Gordon] Caron from Bull and with a lot of people, just how do you go back embrace it and yet how not have it drive the show, because at the end of the day we were never sort of making a documentary of life." Wahlberg agreed with that, noting that the show often explores real situations, but is not bound to it.

"Everything that you see on TV is all about people stepping up, and public service and sacrifice, and the people, the nurses and doctors who come from all over the country here to New York City," Wade said. "We wouldn't be doing our show right if we didn't find some way to pay respect to that from our characters."

One change the show would probably have to tackle in the future is social distancing, since the series famously features the actors sitting inches away from each other at the dinner table. Not only will that have to be built into the story, but also into how the show is filmed once production resumed. The show's production was put on hold early due to the pandemic, so Season 10 ended up being three episodes shy of the usual 22.

Friday night's season finale, "Family Secrets," featured a shocking revelation. Sean (Andrew Terraciano) discovered he had a first cousin he never knew about thanks to a DNA test. The Reagans learned Frank's (Tom Selleck) late son Joe had a son, Joe Hill (Will Hochman) they never knew about. The episode ended with Sean introducing Joe to the family at dinner, with everyone shaking his hand or hugging him.

CBS has not officially renewed Blue Bloods for an 11th season, but Wahlberg appeared to hint that the series will be back in fall 2020. On Friday night, one fan asked if Blue Bloods was picked up, and Wahlberg simply replied "yes." Wahlberg previously told PopCulture.com the cast is "having more fun than we've ever had" and did not see the series ending "anytime soon."