The hiatus since the Season 6 finale of FBI with some seriously unhinged moments is nearly over, as CBS’ hit drama is set to return in the 2024 TV schedule on October 15. Season 7 will be a new era in more ways than one, with new showrunner Mike Weiss stepping into the role formerly held by Rick Eid and Katherine Renee Kane on the way out as Agent Tiffany Wallace. Ahead of the premiere, Weiss and star John Boyd spoke with CinemaBlend about the spy thriller elements on the way and the Tiff/Scola goodbye.
The Season 7 premiere is called “Abandoned,” and will see the team brought onto the case of a Brooklyn plumber whose murder doesn’t seem to fit his lifestyle. The drama will only escalate from there, all with Tiff not entirely over the events from the end of Season 6. (You can revisit the end of Season 6 with a Paramount+ subscription.) It sounds like a big episode as the first in Mike Weiss’ era as FBI showrunner, and he even wrote the script. When I asked the new boss about writing the episode, he shared:
It was a dream assignment, because you’ve got, coming into it, six phenomenal series regulars that you can write towards. Any time we cut to any one of these six people, it’s interesting and it’s dynamic and never boring. And then being able to collaborate with Alex Chapple, our producing director, who directed the first episode of the season, was also a treat. We went back and forth on a bunch of film nerd references as we created the story.
While Mike Weiss was new to FBI with Season 7, that’s certainly not the case for director Alex Chapple, who has not only helmed more than twenty episodes of this show, but also episodes of shows like FBI: Most Wanted, Law & Order: SVU, Chicago P.D., and Chicago Med elsewhere in the shared Dick Wolf TV universe. It’s also not every week that FBI delivers an episode that can qualify as a spy thriller, and Mike Weiss went on to share that as a goal for the premiere. He said:
It was an opportunity to do what I hope is both a very FBI episode, but is also a propulsive spy thriller that our team stumbles into. We start with the death of an unassuming, outer borough plumber, which doesn’t make sense. The way that he’s killed is very sophisticated. It looks like he’s been assassinated, but who on earth would assassinate the plumber? And of course, it turns out that the plumber is not what he appears to be, and a spy plot unfolds. I can’t believe they let us film it. [laughs] It was so much fun to write.
There’s no shortage of spy movies in the history of film, so were there any in particular that inspired Mike Weiss as he was writing “Abandoned” as FBI‘s Season 7 premiere? I asked the showrunner that very question, and he dropped some names:
Definitely The Bourne Identity…The paranoid ‘70s thrillers, which are my absolute favorite. Three Days of the Condor and The Parallax View-type movies where you’ve got smart people in situations that as smart as they are, they can’t figure out. That’s incredibly fun to write.
The episode won’t just be the agents focusing on the case from the opening to the closing credits, however, as “Abandoned” also says goodbye to Katherine Renee Kane as Tiff. Her exit wasn’t specifically foreshadowed at the end of Season 6 in the spring, but she certainly went through the wringer.
Tiff and Scola have been partners for the last several seasons, opposite the partnership of Maggie and OA. With Season 7, Scola is facing the loss of his partner on top of everything he went through last season, up to and including the tension with Nina. Actor John Boyd previewed how his character is doing when hit drama returns:
Scola is in a little bit of denial. I don’t think he’s really ready for what is about to change in his world. He’s thinking maybe Tiff, this is nonsense about her leaving and not wanting to do the job anymore. I don’t think he really understands what’s happening in his world fully, but he ends up losing his partner and saying goodbye to a partner.
Well, there are worse ways to say goodbye in the FBI world than by somebody deciding they don’t want to keep doing the job (case in point: Jess LaCroix on FBI: Most Wanted), but that doesn’t mean Scola has to like it when it means losing his partner. Boyd went on:
It’s a pretty big change for him. Going forward, him figuring out who he is as an agent and who’s right for him and who’s wrong for him as a partner is going to be [fun]. It’s a fun, fun thing to explore.
FBI isn’t going to waste any time in introducing a new partner for Scola, as the description for Episode 2 of Season 7 reveals that he’ll work on welcoming the newcomer. Quickly moving on aside, I think fans can be grateful that Tiff will be back for at least the Season 7 premiere. When I asked the showrunner if there was ever any risk that Katherine Renee Kane wouldn’t be available to appear in the premiere, Mike Weiss explained:
There’s always a risk and things happen, but we really crossed our fingers, because she’s such a great character, such a great actress as well, and the dynamic is so important, we thought, between Scola and Tiff. It would have been a real shame if we couldn’t give them a proper goodbye.
The wait to see what FBI has in store for the “proper goodbye” is nearly over, as the Season 7 premiere will air on Tuesday, October 15 at 8 p.m. ET on CBS. As always, FBI will be followed by FBI: International at 9 p.m. ET, which is welcoming a new leading man with Chicago P.D. alum Jesse Lee Soffer. FBI: Most Wanted will close out the night at 10 p.m. ET. If you want to revisit earlier episodes of all three series, you can find them streaming on Paramount+.