Source: Entertainment Weekly

It was roughly a year ago that the long-running, family-focused Blue Bloods was canceled by CBS after 14 seasons. The outcry was strong, and it wasn’t long before the network announced Boston Blue, a “universe expansion” of Blue Bloods with Donnie Wahlberg reprising his role as hotheaded detective Danny Reagan.

As its title implies, Boston Blue finds Danny joining the Boston Police Department, where he’s paired with Lena Silver (Sonequa Martin-Green), a detective who comes from a law enforcement family not unlike his own in New York City. Danny isn’t the only Reagan in Boston, though — his son, Sean (Mika Amonsen), is also carving out his own career as a cop in Beantown.

Boston Blue is most certainly its own show, but don’t expect it to discard the simple pleasures of its predecessor. Entertainment Weekly’s Kristen Baldwin praised the series for embracing the “if-it-ain’t-broke template” of Blue Bloods, specifically shouting out the “easy, buddy-cop chemistry” between Wahlberg’s Danny and Martin-Green’s Lena.

Ahead of the series’ premiere, let’s meet the cast of Boston Blue, as well as the Blue Bloods alum who joins Wahlberg in the spinoff.

Donnie Wahlberg, brother of Mark Wahlberg, began his career as a founding member of New Kids on the Block. After the boy band split in 1994, Wahlberg began his acting career with roles in Ron Howard’s Ransom (1996) and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense (1999).

Wahlberg continued to work steadily in the 2000s, pairing a leading role on NBC’s Boomtown (2002–2003) with turns in Lawrence Kasdan’s Dreamcatcher (2003) and a handful of Saw sequels (2005–2007).

In 2010, he helped launch Blue Bloods, starring as Danny Reagan, the eldest son of Tom Selleck’s New York City Police Commissioner. Wahlberg stuck with the CBS series for all 14 seasons. Meanwhile, we toured with a reunited New Kids on the Block and produced the Emmy-nominated Wahlburgers (2014–2019), an A&E reality show about the burger chain he started with his brothers.

Now, he’s reprising the role of Danny for Boston Blue. “I just wanna take a second to say how much I appreciate you all. For over a decade and a half, you’ve shown up and supported, and that means the world to me,” the actor said in a behind-the-scenes video shared to his Instagram in July. “Boston Blue is a brand new chapter built on a strong foundation. It’s a different story with all the same heart and all the same love and all the same family at its core.”

Sonequa Martin-Green has been a TV fixture for more than 15 years, with early roles on Army Wives (2009) and The Good Wife (2009–2010) giving way to a leading turn on The Walking Dead (2012–2017), playing sniper Sasha Williams for five seasons.

Martin-Green is perhaps best known for her performance as Star Trek: Discovery protagonist Michael Burnham, a role she played for five seasons.

Donnie Wahlberg, Tom Selleck, Bridget Moynahan, and more reflect on favorite ‘Blue Bloods’ memories

After appearing in the films My Dead Friend Zoe (2024) and She Dances (2025), Martin-Green returns to the small screen as Boston Blue’s Lena Silver, Danny’s new partner at the BPD.

Like Danny, she comes from a prominent family of law enforcement officials and, as EW’s critic put it in her review, she “knows all too well how messy it can be to work a case when you share a surname with your boss and the city’s top attorney.”

“I just couldn’t have expected it,” Martin-Green said on a recent episode of CBS Mornings. “I didn’t think Star Trek: Discovery would come after Walking Dead, and I certainly didn’t think another beloved TV franchise would come after Star Trek: Discovery. So, I’ve learned a lot about doing that, about building new iterations of beloved franchises.”

Maggie Lawson cut her teeth on some of the most popular shows of the 1990s, with guest spots on Boy Meets World (1997), Home Improvement (1998), and Party of Five (1999).

In 2006, she joined the cast of USA’s Psych (2006–2014), starring as Det. Jules O’Hara on all eight seasons and three films. In the years since, she’s appeared on several series, including Netflix’s The Ranch (2017–2018) and Fox’s Lethal Weapon (2018–2019). Most recently, she appeared in Lifetime’s I Was a Child Bride: The Courtney Stodden Story.

On Boston Blue, Lawson plays Sarah Silver, the “strong-willed and decisive” superintendent of the BPD.

Speaking with TV Insider, Lawson said that, like Blue Bloods, “the dinner table is the heartbeat of our show,” adding, “It’s a place where family and friends argue, debate, and challenge each other — and then they laugh and reconnect.”

Gloria Reuben has two Emmy nominations under her belt for her performance as Jeanie Boulet on ER, a role she played from 1995 to 1999 (and reprised in 2008).

Following her stint on ER, Reuben played key roles on series such as Raising the Bar (2008–2009), Mr. Robot (2015–2019), and Cloak & Dagger (2018–2019). Most recently, she appeared with Jessica Biel and Elizabeth Banks on the Amazon Prime thriller The Better Sister (2025).

Eagle-eyed viewers may also recognize Reuben for her two-episode arc in Blue Bloods season 11, where she played ATF Agent Rachel Weber. Don’t expect a reprisal of that character, though.

On Boston Blue, she plays Mae Silver, the Boston District Attorney who’s described as the “matriarch” of the Silver family.

EW’s critic was particularly taken with Reuben’s performance. “Striding through the halls of power sporting chic suits and a retro-glam bob, Mae the matriarch is to Tom Selleck’s Frank as Boston Blue is to Blue Bloods: A little kinder and gentler, but fully capable of getting the job done,” reads her review.

Ernie Hudson is etched into film history as the Ghostbusters franchise’s Winston Zeddemore, but his career encompasses nearly half a century.

Highlights of his expansive film resume include Leviathan (1989), The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992), and Miss Congeniality (2000). His TV credits are just as lengthy, and include roles on Oz (1997–2003), Twin Peaks: The Return (2017), and Quantum Leap (2022–2024), among many others.

In recent years, Hudson reprised Winston for Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024).

On Boston Blue, Hudson plays Reverend Edwin Peters, Mae’s father and Lena’s grandfather. In a recent interview, Hudson described his character as a “community organizer” and “head of one of the oldest Black churches in the country.”

Reverend Peter’s involvement in the community, Hudson said, “allows my character a chance to bring a different perspective to things.”

Prior to joining Boston Blue, Mika Amonsen appeared on episodes of Suits (2018), Reacher (2022), and Pachinko (2024), as well as the Eli Roth slasher Thanksgiving (2023).

Amonsen plays Sean Reagan, the son of Wahlberg’s Danny, who moved from New York City to Boston to become a patrolman for the BPD. Per a character synopsis, Sean has “committed himself to pursuing his family’s legacy but wanted to do so on his own terms, which meant joining a department outside of his hometown.”

The actor takes over the role from Andrew Terraciano, who played the character on Blue Bloods.

“It’s kind of surreal that I was watching Andrew grow up on screen back then, and now I’m stepping into that same world,” Amonsen told TV Insider. “I went back to his later episodes to study his dynamic with Danny and his humor. And I’ve tried to carry over that warmth, his dad’s stubborn streak, and a quiet intelligence that really feels like a Reagan.”

Marcus Scribner will be familiar to fans of ABC’s Black-ish (2014–2022) and Grown-ish (2019–2024), on which he came of age as Andre “Junior” Johnson. On the big screen, he starred in the fantastic 2022 thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline.

Here, Scribner plays Jonah Silver, Lena’s brother and Sean’s good pal. Like Sean, he’s a rookie cop with the BPD.

Bridget Moynahan played Erin Reagan, sister to Danny and the Assistant District Attorney of New York County, on Blue Bloods.

She reprises the role in the Boston Blue premiere, helping to ease Blue Bloods fans into the spinoff’s fresh milieu.

“Reunited and [it] feels so good!” Wahlberg wrote on Instagram in July. His post also revealed that Moynahan will also direct an episode of Boston Blue.

Will she return for more onscreen action? That remains to be seen, but Wahlberg did tease more “surprises” to come later in the season.

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