Warning: Some SPOILERS lie ahead for CIA season 1!After a season of testing each other's patience, the CIA season 1 finale has given Colin and Bill a new path forward.
Hailing from the creative team of Dick Wolf, David Hudgins, Warren Leight, Nicole Perlman, David Chasteen and showrunner Mike Weiss, the CBS series marks the latest spinoff of the long-running FBI franchise. Led by Lucifer alum Tom Ellis and One Chicago vet Nick Gehlfuss, the show has followed by-the-book FBI Special Agent Bill Goodman and secretive CIA Agent Colin Glass as they find themselves inadvertently partnered in a new joint-agency task force, all while the former investigates a potential mole among them.
This has all built up to CIA season 1's finale, "Broken Glass," in which Colin learns that his former work and romantic partner, Toni, is actually alive, in spite of her perceived death during a mission in the Philippines, and has killed the team's mole, Jake Matthews' Kevin Turner. The pair race across the city in the hopes to find her and discover why she killed Kevin, and where she's been in the years since her apparent death.
In honor of the episode's premiere, ScreenRant's Grant Hermanns interviewed Tom Ellis and Nick Gehlfuss to discuss the CIA season 1 finale. The pair opened up about the organic nature of their chemistry building over the course of the first season, as well how Bill and Colin's dynamic has changed by the ending and what it will mean going into season 2.
It Was "Love At First Audition" For Ellis & Gehlfuss
Reflecting on their time with the series thus far, and the feedback from both critics and fans, Ellis and Gehlfuss pointed out the consistent praise for their chemistry, with the former denoting that he was "very aware that if this show was going to have any degree of success, it would really hinge on this relationship." Recalling their first chemistry read together, Ellis found he was realizing "we had this great kind of affection for each other" beyond their characters, as much as "worked really well" together:
Tom Ellis: We were looking for this kind of odd couple dynamic, and what we realized through the process is you can't really force that situation. It just has to be that these two characters are diametrically opposed in all areas, but you can't say, "Because of this and because of that," it is just a natural thing. And Nick and I, we started working together. It was like, "Oh, this is it. This is the relationship that we knew we were looking to find, and this is the dynamic." We're not acting it, if you know what I mean.
Ellis went on to celebrate that "people [are] really get[ting] on the Colin and Bill train" and enjoying both characters spending time with each other and the rest of the CIA cast, as well as "what they hide from each other, their moments of discovery together" and "their moments of humor together." Gehlfuss went on to chuckle as he called it "love at first audition," while also being excited that audiences "want us to keep telling stories."
The One Chicago alum went on to acknowledge that the frequent mention of his and Ellis' chemistry in the series is a delicate balance, as "we don't play that as actors," but instead have to "come to set ready with your part of the puzzle," as well as "the type of person you are blended with that" and "listen and technically do what we're supposed to do" in an effort to "portray three-dimensional, truthful human beings." And while he admits he doesn't know "how to say we have good chemistry," Gehlfuss himself even spotted the chemistry when going back and rewatching the episodes:
Nick Gehlfuss: I see what people are responding to. I think it's just the magic of what can happen when you have all the right ingredients. I'm really happy to be a part of that, personally. But yeah, the genre, I think, is also something that's a little brand new to broadcast television. We've seen it in film and premium cable, but espionage, it's juicy.
Bill & Colin Finally Have A Real Trust In One Another After CIA Season 1's Ending
While they may have started off on a note of distrust and differing worldviews, Bill and Colin's dynamic has changed drastically by the CIA season 1 finale, with the former acting as a grounding anchor for the latter in his hunt for Toni throughout the episode. This even comes with an emotional moment between the pair in the ending, as Bill calls Colin his partner and offers words of comfort, even while revealing that Angela Sarafyan's character is going to be put back into the field as an operative.
When asked about what the dynamic is like going into the already-greenlit CIA season 2, Ellis began by explaining the start of the show features "surety and trust in other areas of their life," but feels that "Bill is now the one person that Colin probably really trusts, even more so than Nikki." He also feels there's probably a similar feeling for Bill by the end of the season, as "he finds himself trusting Colin more than anyone else in his life":
Tom Ellis: I think that was the journey of the first season, was about the building of trust in a world where trust doesn't really exist. They got there, but unfortunately, the wheels came off everywhere else in their life. [Laughs] So, like they're going to have to really rely on each other now to get themselves out, and Colin out of this existential crisis that he's now in, because everything he thought about himself and his life and the people in it has just been thrown into the air. It is interesting that they got there in the end, but unfortunately, the things that fell apart around them, now they're going to have to use that trust to get out of it.
Gehlfuss humorously pointed out that the CIA season 1 ending is "appropriately titled 'Broken Glass'," feeling that Bill is really having to keep his cohort together through the episode. Ellis retorted with a chuckle as he shared that "we did sing Annie Lennox every day on set," referring to the Scottish singer's 1992 hit "Walking on Broken Glass," which Gehlfuss confirmed and expressed his "hope that's the credit song," saying "we've really missed an opportunity" if it wasn't.
The star went on to share that Bill is "totally supporting and helping Colin through this emotional journey that is the Toni and Sarah love triangle" in the CIA season 1 finale, as Sarah Diamond's character returns to unknowingly help the pair get into the Pyramid party the climax is set at. Gehlfuss also found that Bill and Colin have "come to new levels in their relationship" across the FBI spinoff that has helped show "why having a partner is important and beneficial" in an effort to "lean on someone when you're so out of it":
Nick Gehlfuss: You're not sure where to point, where your true north is. It was fantastic to see Bill help him in that way. And given the journey that Bill's gone on, and where he's at, he's just kind of mirroring everything Colin already knows, but he's reminding him of things that he's learned at the same time. So in that, he's helping Colin, but also I think Colin's seeing in Bill that, "Wow, he's taken to this whole world."
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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