It seems like FBI will have no choice but to finally start addressing the romantic tension between Maggie and OA in season 9. The 2025-2026 network TV cycle brought many changes to the New York Field Office. For starters, FBI moved to Monday nights on the heels ofFBI: Most Wanted and FBI: International cancellations, and it will continue to live there moving forward. In terms of narrative, John Scola said goodbye to yet another partner, when Dani Rhodes was killed in the line of duty, while Isobel refused her promotion to stay with the team.
At the end of FBI season 8, the CBS procedural already had a brand new spinoff, in Tom Ellis and Nick Gelfhuss' CIA, keeping its franchise traditions alive. While that's exciting, how the series wrapped the year effectively set up the first major case of season 9. When FBI returns as part of CBS's fall 2026 lineup, it will see OA still undercover, as stealthily planned by him, Maggie, and Isobel. Beyond that, however, it's imperative that the series starts addressing the romantic possibility between the show's original partners.
FBI Is Up For Renewal After Season 9
Usually overshadowed by CBS's longest-running scripted series, NCIS, in the procedural department, Dick Wolf's FBI has actually been a quiet hit for the network for years. While it supposedly maintains the same reality as NBC's Law & Order and One Chicago franchises, the New York-based team barely has any interactions with Benson and the people over in the Midwest. Instead, it feels like it exists in its own bubble, with other spinoffs surrounding it. Proof of how successful it has been is the fact that it has already birthed three offshoots in less than a decade. Beyond that, CBS also awarded FBI a multi-year renewal in 2024, securing its return until season 9.
This means that after this cycle, FBI will be up for renewal, which makes this new season extra important. Further putting pressure on the matter is the fact that the series suffered a dip in viewership. For context, FBI season 7 averaged 6.143 million viewers every week — a slight decrease from the previous year, which was 6.76 million. Unfortunately, season 9 had a significant plunge to 4.635, meaning a loss of over 24% of its viewers during the 2025-2026 cycle (via TV Series Finale). Not really a good place to be in as FBI enters season 9, but the good thing is, there are ways that it can reclaim its former glory.
How OA & Maggie's Romance Can Breathe New Life Into FBI
As with the majority of ensemble procedurals, FBI has gone through so many cast changes in the past. Wolf Entertainment also made sure that its storytelling is diversified beyond its weekly cases, ensuring that every main character, especially those who have been in the series the longest, are given their time under the spotlight. That said, it would be inaccurate to say that the most important characters in FBI are OA and Maggie. Their individual plots are great, but their partnership is at the core of the project's storytelling.
For years, theories about a potential romance between the pair have floated around. After all, Wolf Entertainment is known for this kind of narrative, evidenced by Olivia Benson and Elliot Stabler in Law & Order: SVU. Backed by hints from the show itself and their deepening connection, there are hopes that the pair's proposed slow-burn romance finally pays off. Doing this in FBI season 9 is the perfect way to reinvigorate its fan-base and pull it from the rut that it has fallen into.
Granted that the CBS series has other storylines that it could tackle, it might even introduce new compelling ones in the upcoming cycle, but the series can't afford to risk it this year, considering it's hoping for a renewal. Maggie and OA's budding romance getting a concrete development would lure long-time fans of FBI that may have lost interest in the last cycle back.
CIA Season 2's Fate Officially Decided By CBS After Rocky Season 1 Production
The fate of CBS' new FBI spinoff series, CIA, has now been decided.
CBS confirmed that CIA has officially been renewed for season 2, following impressive viewership numbers from its series premiere. According to Paramount, the premiere episode saw 8.4 million multiplatform viewers via broadcast and streaming within the first seven days of its release.
Ratings for the first three episodes of the series showed a 39% improvement on Monday at 10 p.m. compared to the same timeslot in fall 2025.
Behind the scenes, though, CIA has had a rocky production. FBI: Most Wanted showrunner David Hudgins was initially in charge of the series, but Warren Leight later replaced him. That wasn't the end of the turnover, though, as he eventually departed, along with executive producer Eriq La Salle. Mike Weiss, who was the showrunner on the original FBI series, was hired as the CIA showrunner.
All of this turmoil, plus Michael Michele's departure from the cast, caused production delays, and CBS decided to give CIA a mid-season 2026 premiere after previously announcing it would debut in fall 2025.
CIA stars Tom Ellis and Nick Gehlfuss as CIA Agent Colin Glass and FBI Agent Bill Goodman, respectively, who are tasked with working together on a secretive joint CIA/FBI task force. The two agents couldn't be more different, with the latter a rule-follower and the former more mischievous in nature.
While on the job together, Glass and Goodman stay in the shadows as they solve domestic and international crimes away from the eyes of the public.
Before CIA, Ellis was best known for his role as Lucifer Morningstar on the Fox/Netflix drama Lucifer, while Gehlfuss has starred in The Newsroom, Shameless, and Chicago Med (another Dick Wolf-created series).
Their CIA co-stars include Necar Zadegan and Natalee Linez. Zadegan, who plays Nikki Reynard, will guest star in the March 30 episode of FBI season 8, in which the Deputy Chief of Station is called in to help following a double homicide. The episode will mark Maggie Bell's return to the team after suffering a major loss.
Wolf created the hugely popular Law & Order and One Chicago franchises on NBC, and then went on to create the FBI crime procedural franchise for CBS. The first FBI series debuted in 2018 with star Missy Peregrym and is currently airing its eighth season.
Two years later, the first spinoff, FBI: Most Wanted, launched and aired for six seasons. FBI: International followed in its footsteps and aired for four seasons.
CIA, which currently has a 63% critic score and 51% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, marks the third FBI spinoff, with Wolf, Weiss, Ken Girotti, Paul Cabbad, Nicole Perlman, David Chasteen, Anastasia Puglisi, and Peter Jankowski serving as executive producers.
CIA airs Mondays at 10 p.m. EDT on CBS.
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