‘Blue Bloods’ Series Finale Brings in Season High Ratings for Show, Raises Questions About Cancellation

The Blue Bloods series finale saw a record number of viewers as fans tuned in to say goodbye to the Reagan family.

The series finale, led by Tom Selleck, earned a season-high 6.68 million viewers in Live+Same Day ratings, per VideoAmp data. Additionally, this was up 15 percent over the season-to-date in Live+Same Day viewership average.

The Friday, 10 p.m., time slot was not the favorable spot in the CBS lineup, but the superstar cast featuring Tom, 79, Donnie Wahlberg, Bridget Moynahan, Will Estes, Vanessa Ray and Len Cariou, propelled the series to the top of the ratings.

“Imagine if you told CBS when we started in 2010, ‘Here’s a show you can program on your worst time slot. You don’t have to promote it, and it’ll win the night for 15 years.’ That’s pretty neat!” Tom told Variety in a December 12 interview.

The Blue Bloods series finale aired on December 13, with all of the Reagans working to solve the same case. In the end, they all joined together for the final family dinner, where Eddie and Jamie announced they were expecting their first child together. Erin and Jack also revealed they were going to get married again.

“We’d often thought about Eddie having a child,” showrunner Kevin Wade told TV Insider. “It seemed like a natural progression from the chemistry that they had to their wedding. It was always in the cards that they’d think, ‘Let’s start a family before it’s too late.’ But we went year to year for the last number of years not knowing if we were coming back. Because we would always find out close to the last minute, we didn’t want to paint ourselves into a corner that we either couldn’t dramatize or couldn’t get out of.”

“So we’d sort of paint the horizon in a little bit and then filling in the details seemed like the way to do it — especially for Jamie and Eddie and for Erin and Jack, and certainly for Danny and Baez,” he added.

Though the episode ended on a happy note, it certainly stings to see such a successful show go off the air.

“We worked hard to represent the people of New York and the NYPD, and we worked hard to keep the show going and to keep it compelling for 14 years,” Donnie, 55, told Fox News on December 14. “And it was a lot to say goodbye. It might sometimes, from the outside, seem weird, like, ‘Oh, all these actors are crying that their show’s over.’ But we did become a family, and we did become a family with the crew. And just to say goodbye to them was emotional.”

Fans are so used to seeing Tom and his castmates on TV every Friday. It’s going to be a big adjustment, but the Magnum, P.I. alum assured fans that he has no plans to stop acting any time soon.

“I’m not retiring. I‘ve got a mortgage; I got a ranch that I love and I love the work. Look, I’m not exactly a spring chicken in the business,” he said, acknowledging that “the phone can stop ringing.”

“I’m still adjusting,” he said of life after Blue Bloods. “I’d like to think that somebody will think of something different. A comedy would be nice.”