S.W.A.T. Moves Two Vets to Recurring in Final Season, EP Promises a ‘Proper Curtain Call’ for Each (Exclusive)
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Two S.W.A.T. team members will get earlier sendoffs than the rest, as the CBS crime drama unspools its 13-episode final season.
TVLine has learned exclusively that original cast members Kenneth “Kenny” Johnson and Alex Russell, who since Day 1 have respectively filled the series regular roles of Dominique Luca and Jim Street, will only recur during the upcoming Season 7 (premiering Friday, Feb. 16).
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Yet while the actors’ remaining time with S.W.A.T. may be on the shorter side, it promises to be sweet. Or, at least satisfying for their respective fans.
“Looking at [Season 7] being the final 13 [episodes], we wanted to give everybody their proper curtain call,” S.W.A.T. showrunner Andrew Dettmann tells TVLine, “so the episodes that we have for them are really focused on their characters and the evolution of their storylines.
“I’m really excited about the episodes we have for [Luca and Street],” Dettmann reiterates. “The idea for the final 13 was that, if this was the end for us, nobody feels like they were underserved. There are some really good episodes fo Alex and Kenny, for Street and Luca.”
Elsewhere on the final-season casting front, as first reported by TVLine, recurring player Anna Enger Ritch was promoted to series regular, as Officer Zoe Powell.
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Back in May, CBS reversed its decision to cancel S.W.A.T., instead handing the long-running procedural a 13-episode seventh and final season.
“We have listened to our viewers and their outpouring of passion for S.W.A.T.,” Amy Reisenbach, President of CBS Entertainment, and Katherine Pope, President of Sony Pictures Television Studios, said at the time in a statement. “We are pleased that we found a way to bring it back and give closure to the show’s storylines and characters, which audiences deserve.”
S.W.A.T. begins its swan song on Friday, Feb. 16 at 8/7c with the first half of a two-parter in which Hondo (played by Shemar Moore), Hicks (Patrick St. Esprit) and Powell head to Mexico City to retrieve a fugitive who slipped from Hondo’s grasp 10 years ago. But when things go sideways, Hondo finds himself once again on the killer’s trail, desperate to fulfill a decade-old promise.
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