Blue Bloods is finally on the way back to CBS for Season 12 after nearly four full months of hiatus, and changes are on the way for the Reagans. The family has been through a lot over the years and dealt with their fair share of heartbreak, some of which still hasn’t been fully addressed. Danny Reagan, played by Donnie Wahlberg, lost wife Linda several seasons ago now, but according to the Blue Bloods showrunner, Season 12 will give him some clarity.
In the Season 12 premiere of Blue Bloods, Danny consults a psychic to solve the murder of a young boy, which brings him into contact with medium Maggie Gibson, played once again by Callie Thorne. While that’s already an unconventional investigative avenue, to say the least, Danny is going to get more than what he was looking for out of the encounter with Maggie. Kevin Wade previewed Danny’s story to TV Guide Magazine’s 2021 Returning Favorites issue (via TV Insider), saying:
She [asks], ‘When’s the last time you went out with a woman, not to seduce her but for companionship?’ And it strikes him—the clarity with which she sees him. Without spoiling the [scene’s] end, her words affect him. He wakes up a bit.
It sounds like a pretty complicated situation to lead to some clarity, as the case that motivates Danny to go see Maggie Gibson is the death of a toddler who was killed in the crossfire of an unsolved street shooting. He takes the sock of the toddler to Maggie to try and get her to identify the murderer, which honestly sounds pretty dark to me, so hopefully the clarity leads to good things for Danny.
The death of Amy Carlson’s Linda came as a shocker back in the Season 8 premiere, when Blue Bloods revealed that Linda had died in a helicopter crash during hiatus, survived by husband Danny and their two sons. Linda had to be written out due to Carlson’s decision to depart the series, and Carlson herself had a blunt reaction to how Blue Bloods chose to pull it of.
Losing Linda of course wasn’t the only tragedy that Danny has had to deal with during the long run of Blue Bloods so far, but based on Kevin Wade’s comments about the medium calling out Danny not seeking the companionship of a woman, it seems likely that the conversation with have something to do with Danny not fully processing the death of his wife.
And hey, if Danny is in the headspace of pocketing a murdered child’s sock to take to a medium to try and solve the crime, I think a wakeup call can only be a good thing. It should definitely be interesting to see how Blue Bloods picks up the stories of the whole Reagan family, as Kevin Wade revealed back in May that he’d actually planned the Season 11 finale as a series finale in case the worst happened and the show was cancelled.
Fortunately for fans, the worst did not happen, and Blue Bloods is just days away from returning for Season 12. Catch the beginning of the new season on Friday, October 1 at 10 p.m. ET on CBS. If you need a refresher on the latest (or just to revisit the greatest hits) of the series, you can find the first eleven seasons of Blue Bloods streaming on Paramount+ now.