Blue Bloods isn’t interested in reinventing the wheel in its final season. Showrunner Kevin Wade tells TV Insider that just like in Season 14 Part 1 and its finale, which aired on Friday, May 17 on CBS, Blue Bloods‘ final episodes will be reliably familiar territory, but it will always aim to entertain its loyal viewers. There are dramatic turns they’re interested in exploring, like the bail reform plot line and Aidan Quinn‘s violent reaction to it in the midseason finale, but one thing that’s not likely to happen when the show returns is a Danny and Baez romance.
Danny (Donnie Wahlberg) and Baez (Marisa Ramirez) had the heavy task of reining in Quinn’s Det. Gus Vanderlip, who had gone rogue in response to a serial rapist he had arrested two weeks prior being released. Between this storyline and the crooked sober-living house at which Jamie (Will Estes) and Eddie (Vanessa Ray) were undercover (they were finally on-assignment together!), there was plenty of intensity in the midseason finale without thinking too much about romance.
Wade tells TV Insider that Jamie and Eddie’s romance is sufficient for the show, but he admits that Danny and Baez do “have a lot of chemistry together. It’s wonderful.” But Wade also doesn’t think Danny has been written for a romantic turn.
“We put Jamie and Eddie together a few years ago. I think the show would dip into parody if we had two of our cops marrying two of their partners who are getting into that,” Wade explains. “And candidly, to me, Danny Reagan has been built and played as a loner. I know he was married for half of the episodes, but he’s almost like the classic private eye who is married to his work and who has the freedom and the latitude to do whatever he wants. Because unfortunately at home, there’s nothing much there.”
Wade is also hesitant to dive into a Danny and Baez romance in the final season because “there’s no great scenes in happy relationships,” a.k.a. he would have to write in some turmoil for the pair if they were going to get together. With the series coming to a close with the second half of Season 14, there doesn’t seem to be enough time to create this storyline in a meaningful way.
“The audience may think they want [a Danny and Baez romance], and perhaps they do, and perhaps I’m completely wrong. That’s always a strong possibility,” Wade says. “But if we were to put them together and there’s a scene where they’re, I don’t know what, having dinner together and they’re happy, I don’t know what that is.”
He knows why fans ‘ship them together, though.
“Donnie and Marissa, no matter what we write, manage to find ways to show that the two like each other more than as partners,” Wade says. “Let’s put it at that. They’re very good at engineering a subtextual relationship that the audience clearly gets.”
Danny and Baez shippers, your theory wasn’t wrong! Wahlberg and Ramirez are playing into that, but it seems that these feelings will remain subtext moving forward.
Blue Bloods, Season 14 Part 2, Premieres Fall 2024, CBS