'The Rookie's Spin-Off Is Making the Same Mistake as the Franchise’s Cancelled Show

Image via ABC Published Oct 31, 2026, 9:01 PM EDT Jeffrey is a freelance features writer at Collider. He is an MPA-accredited entertainment journalist and a Tomatometer-approved critic based in the LA area. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelor of Science in Radio, TV, & Film and a Bachelor of Arts in Theater. Sign in to your Collider account ABC's hit series, The Rookie, has another spin-off in the works, with series creator Alexi Hawley showrunning The Rookie: North, starring Jay Ellis cast as the lead. The Rookie: North is set in Washington State, and follows a middle-aged man named Alex Holand in his 40s-50s who becomes a police officer, starting a new phase in his life in its second act. Wait a minute, that sounds vaguely familiar. Isn't that the premise of The Rookie? That backstory sounds almost identical to John Nolan's (Nathan Fillion), the lead character of the flagship series. And while the original series is still successful, it feels like The Rookie: North is making a huge mistake by banking on the same premise as the original show. Even worse, it's a mistake they've made already. The Backstory of 'The Rookie: North's Protagonist Backstory Is Too Similar to John Nolan's It seems highly derivative to create another spin-off of The Rookie franchise that is even more similar to the original series than the first spin-off, The Rookie: Feds, which starred Niecy Nash as Simone Clark. The Rookie: Feds' premise remarkably resembled The Rookie, showcasing a single mom in her 40s changing careers and becoming a rookie agent in the FBI. However, although the setup was similar, at least Feds changed things up a bit, making Simone an FBI agent with a different background as a guidance counselor. After the failure of Feds, it seems Hawley wants to repeat the success of the original series by making the main character even more similar to John Nolan. COLLIDERInteractive Five wards on call TV/Medical Drama/Shift Assignment Collider · TV Medicine Which Fictional HospitalWould You Work Best In? Eight questions · five wards · one assignment Five hospitals. Five completely different ways medicine goes sideways on television: brutal, chaotic, romantic, brilliant and ridiculous. Only one of them is the ward your instincts were built for, and eight questions will work out exactly where you belong. Wards accepting PTMCThe Pitt CGHER GSMGrey's Anatomy PPTHHouse SHHScrubs Find your hospital Question 01 of 08APPROACH 01 A critical patient comes through the door. What is your first instinct? Medicine under pressure reveals who you really are. AStay completely present. Block everything else out and work it step by step, right now. BTriage fast and delegate. Get the right people on the right problems immediately. CTrust my gut and move. I work best when I stop overthinking and just act. DAsk the question everyone else is ignoring. What is the thing that does not fit? ETake a breath, make a joke to cut the tension, then get to work. Panic helps nobody. ← Back Keys 1 to 5 or A to E · Enter to advance Next Question 02 of 08MOTIVATION 02 Why did you go into medicine in the first place? The honest answer says more about you than the one you would give in an interview. ABecause I wanted to be where it matters most, right at the edge, when a life is on the line. BBecause I wanted to help people, one patient at a time, in a system that makes it hard. CBecause I was drawn to the intensity of it: the stakes, the drama, the feeling of being fully alive. DBecause medicine is the most interesting puzzle there is, and I needed a problem worth solving. EBecause I wanted to make a difference, and also, honestly, I did not know what else to do. ← Back Keys 1 to 5 or A to E · Enter to advance Next Question 03 of 08COLLEAGUES 03 What do you want most from the people you work with? Who you want beside you under pressure is who you are. ACompetence and calm. I need people who do not fall apart when things get bad. BTrust and reliability. When I pass something off I want to know it is handled. CConnection. I want colleagues who become family, even when that gets complicated. DIntelligence and the willingness to be challenged. People who just agree with me are useless. EFriendship. People I like spending twelve hours a day with, because those hours are happening anyway. ← Back Keys 1 to 5 or A to E · Enter to advance Next Question 04 of 08LOSS 04 You lose a patient you fought hard to save. How do you carry it? Every doctor who has worked a long shift has had to answer this one. AI carry it. All of it. I do not look for ways to put it down, because that weight is part of doing this honestly. BI process it and move. You have to, or the next patient pays for the one you just lost. CI feel it deeply and lean on the people around me. Nobody is supposed to handle that alone. DI go back over every decision, not to punish myself, but because I need to know what I missed. EI grieve it, find something unrelated to laugh about, and try to be kind to myself. Imperfectly. ← Back Keys 1 to 5 or A to E · Enter to advance Next Question 05 of 08STYLE 05 How would your colleagues describe the way you work? Your reputation on the floor is usually more accurate than your self-image. AIntense and completely present. No small talk during a shift, but exactly who you want there. BSteady and dependable. Not the flashiest in the room, but never the one who drops something. CPassionate and occasionally chaotic. Brilliant on the hard cases, prone to drama everywhere else. DBrilliant and difficult. Right more often than anyone else, and everyone knows it, including me. EWarm and self-deprecating. Not the most intimidating presence, but good at this and easy to like. ← Back Keys 1 to 5 or A to E · Enter to advance Next Question 06 of 08RULES 06 How do you feel about hospital protocol and procedure? Every institution has rules. What you do with them is a choice. AProtocol is the floor, not the ceiling. I follow it until the patient needs something it cannot give. BI respect it. The system is broken in places, but the structure exists for a reason and I work inside it. CI follow it until my instincts say otherwise, and my instincts are usually right, even when they cause trouble. DRules are for people who have not thought hard enough about when to break them. EI try to follow it and mostly do, with a few memorable exceptions that still come up in meetings. ← Back Keys 1 to 5 or A to E · Enter to advance Next Question 07 of 08TOLL 07 What does this job cost you personally? Nobody works in medicine without paying a price. What is yours? AEverything outside these walls. I gave this job my full attention and the rest of my life went around it. BMy idealism, mostly. I came in believing the system could be fixed and I made a complicated peace with that. CStability. My personal life has been as chaotic as the OR, and that is not entirely a coincidence. DMy relationships. I am not easy to know, and the people who tried would probably agree. EMy sense of gravity. I use humor as a coping mechanism, which not everyone appreciates in a hospital. ← Back Keys 1 to 5 or A to E · Enter to advance Next Question 08 of 08PURPOSE 08 At the end of a long shift, what keeps you coming back? The answer to this one is the most honest thing about you. AThe fact that it is real. Nothing else I could be doing would matter this much, right now, today. BThe patients. Individual human beings who needed something and got it because I was there. CThe people I work with. I have walked through impossible things with them and I would do it again. DThe next unsolved case. There is always another puzzle, and I am not done yet. EBecause despite the exhaustion, the loss and the absurdity of it, I love this job. ← Back Keys 1 to 5 or A to E · Enter to advance Reveal my hospital Assignment madeYou belong in PTMC · Admitted The Pitt Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center This ward asks whether you can stay in the room for the whole shift, and come back tomorrow. You are built for the most unsparing version of emergency medicine television has shown, the one that puts you inside a single long shift and does not let you look away. You need your work to be real rather than romanticized, and you find your purpose inside the work itself rather than in the chaos around it. You have made peace with a job that takes from you constantly and gives back in ways that are harder to name. What this ward asks of you Meaning over drama, honesty over aesthetics. The discipline to stay present when the department is at its worst. A tolerance for weight that does not get put down at the end of the day. From the Collider file Each episode covers roughly one hour of the same emergency-department shift, in order. Noah Wyle has now won the lead drama actor Emmy for it twice, in 2025 and again in 2026. It reunites the ER team of Wyle, John Wells and R. Scott Gemmill, thirty years on. Fully present No romance Built to endure CGH · Admitted ER County General Hospital, Chicago This ward asks whether you can hold the line long enough for the next person to take it. You are the one who keeps the whole floor moving. Not the most brilliant in the room, possibly the most essential. You show up, do the work, absorb the losses and come back the next day without needing the job to be anything other than what it is. You care about patients as individual people rather than as cases to solve or dramas to live inside, and you believe in the system even on the days it fails you. What this ward asks of you Reliability above brilliance, every single shift. Faith in a structure that is visibly imperfect. The stamina to treat the hundredth patient like the first. From the Collider file Fifteen seasons and 331 episodes, from 1994 to 2009, created by Michael Crichton. It holds the record for the most Emmy nominations of any drama series, with 124. George Clooney, Julianna Margulies and Noah Wyle all broke out of County General. Shows up Endurance Patient first GSM · Admitted Grey's Anatomy Grey Sloan Memorial, Seattle This ward asks whether you can do the work with your whole self in the room. You came to medicine with everything you have, your ambition, your feelings, your relationships and your history, and you have never quite managed to leave any of it at the door. You form deep attachments to the people you work with, and your personal and professional lives stay permanently, chaotically tangled. That tangle drives both your worst disasters and your most remarkable saves, because you understand that extraordinary medicine often happens where clinical skill meets human connection. What this ward asks of you A willingness to feel all of it rather than seal any of it off. Colleagues who become family, with everything that costs. Comfort with mess, in the OR and everywhere else. From the Collider file Shonda Rhimes' series passed ER to become the longest-running primetime medical drama on US television. It is on season 22, with ABC having already renewed it for a twenty-third. Ellen Pompeo has played Meredith Grey across three decades of television. Feels everything Found family Beautifully messy PPTH · Admitted House Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital This ward asks whether you can be right when everyone in the room needs you to be wrong. You are drawn to the problem above everything: the symptom that does not fit, the diagnosis hiding underneath the obvious one. The patient as a person is not your first motivation, though you are capable of caring more than you would admit. You work best when the stakes are highest and the standard answer is wrong. Princeton-Plainsboro exists to house one extraordinary and impossible mind, and everyone near it is there because they can keep up. What this ward asks of you Thinking harder than anyone else in the room, then defending it. A high tolerance for being disliked while you are right. Interest in the puzzle that outlasts your interest in being comfortable. From the Collider file Eight seasons built on Sherlock Holmes: House and Holmes, Wilson and Watson, and an apartment at 221B. Hugh Laurie taped his audition in a hotel bathroom in Namibia while shooting another film. By 2008 it was the most-watched television show on earth, with an audience around 82 million. Chases the puzzle Difficult on purpose Usually right SHH · Admitted Scrubs Sacred Heart Hospital, California This ward asks whether you can hold the tragedy and the absurdity at the same time. You understand that medicine is devastating and ridiculous in roughly equal measure, and that the only sane response is to carry both at once. You are warm, self-aware and funnier than most people in your field. You use humor to get through terrible moments, which at Sacred Heart is a survival strategy rather than a flaw. You lean on the people around you and let them lean back, because here the laughter and the grief are inseparable. What this ward asks of you Humor that never curdles into cruelty. The honesty to admit you are still learning how to do this. People you can lean on, and the willingness to be leaned on. From the Collider file Nine seasons from Bill Lawrence, filmed largely inside a real decommissioned hospital in North Hollywood. Working doctors have repeatedly named it the most accurate medical show on television. Zach Braff, Donald Faison and Sarah Chalke returned for an ABC revival that premiered in February 2026. Laughs to cope Still learning Leans on people Shift report · your top three 1 2 3 ↻ Retake the quiz Copied to your clipboard Chart signed byCOLLIDERCollider.com · The TV Desk Alex of The Rookie: North is described as "a former overachiever who becomes a rookie cop after his life did not go as planned." Obviously, the final product might tweak elements of Alex's backstory, but that sounds almost word-for-word like John's background. Additionally, the new show is expected to feature other training officers and a police chief in the main cast. The strategy for the spin-off appears to be a massive misstep, attempting to rehash The Rookie's success, rather than trying something more refreshing and original. 'The Rookie' Caught Lightning in a Bottle As the saying goes, lightning never strikes in the same place twice, and The Rookie caught lightning in a bottle, finding success through the show's incredible blend of drama and comedy and the chemistry of its lead cast. Although Fillion exceptionally leads the show, portraying a middle-aged single father seeking to reinvent himself as an officer for the LAPD, the show succeeded through its other lead cast members, such as Melissa O'Neil as Lucy Chen and Eric Winter as Tim Bradford. Lucy and Tim's evolving relationship and romance became a fan-favorite throughout the show's run, and the series discovered something truly magical with the ragtag band of officers at the LAPD's Mid-Wilshire Division. Attempting the same premise in Washington State instead of Los Angeles will not necessarily achieve the same results. Notably, the show's story was inspired by a real-life figure, Officer William Norcross, who became an LAPD officer in his 40s after leaving his family's business. The main theme of The Rookie deals with reinvention, but this type of lifestyle reinvention can take many forms, rather than simply following John's version. In the original series, Lucy finds her own form of transformation in joining the LAPD, as she decides not to pursue a career in psychology, which she studied in college. She ultimately finds her true calling as a police officer, which exemplifies how The Rookie can depict professionally-diverse characters seeking to reinvent their lives. 'The Rookie: North' Needs To Forge Its Own Identity Separate From the Original Show Image: Disney/Mike Taing The main objective of The Rookie: North should be to forge its own unique identity to set it apart from The Rookie. Currently, the premise sounds fairly unoriginal and unexciting. Obviously, it's expected to depict cops who are career rookies, since the show is called The Rookie. However, one would hope that Hawley would seek an alternative angle with the spin-off series that is bolder and depicts a unique setup beyond what we see with Nolan. Right now, The Rookie: North runs the risk of following the same fate as the first spin-off, The Rookie: Feds, which was cancelled after one season, despite a backdoor pilot showing Nolan teaming up with Simone to kickstart the new series. It has already been announced that The Rookie and The Rookie: North will have a couple of crossovers. If that is the case, then the spin-off needs to do far more than just finding a new approach to the subject; it needs to create its own identity beyond the original series to leave a true mark.