Brooklyn Nine-Nine Season 9 - Will It Ever Happen?

"Brooklyn Nine-Nine" first aired on Fox in the fall of 2013, immediately cementing itself as yet another classic from Michael Schur ("Parks & Recreation") and Dan Goor — so why did it end, and will we ever get another season?

The comedy, which was led by "Saturday Night Live" alum Andy Samberg alongside a perfect ensemble cast including Andre Braugher, Terry Crews, Melissa Fumero, Stephanie Beatriz, Joe Lo Truglio, Dirk Blocker, and Joel McKinnon Miller, focused on the 99th precinct in Brooklyn and their constant misadventures in policing — and that description alone might give you a clue as to why the series ended if you've, say, watched or read any news since 2020 or so. The show came to a close in the fall of 2021 with its eighth and final season after facing delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but even getting to eight seasons wasn't easy for this little show that could; it was pretty famously canceled by Fox, its original parent channel, after the fifth season in 2018, and ultimately saved by NBC after a star-studded campaign arose to keep it alive. So why did it spend just two short seasons on NBC before concluding its run?

There are a whole bunch of reasons, and they add up to one apparent fact: we likely will not get a ninth season of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" any time soon or, perhaps, ever. Here's why.

There are a handful of reasons why "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" hasn't returned for a ninth season, and most of them are pretty standard (the show's narrative feels finished, the cast has moved on to other projects, and so on). There seem to be two major reasons that will likely prevent a future season of the workplace comedy, though: the re-examination of policing in America that's taken place since the summer of 2020, and the fact that one of the show's stars, Andre Braugher, passed away after the series concluded.

To that first point, 2021 was the right time for "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" to close out its run. After a delay due to the pandemic, the show returned only to confront a new social issue after the world rose up to protest against unconscionable police violence in 2020, spurred by the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. As star Terry Crews revealed on Access Hollywood, the show's writers actually tossed a handful of scripts before starting their eighth season. "We've had a lot of somber talks about it and deep conversations and we hope through this we're going to make something that will be truly groundbreaking this year," Crews said at the time. "We have an opportunity and we plan to use it in the best way possible. Our show-runner Dan Goor, they had four episodes all ready to go and they just threw them in the trash. We have to start over. Right now we don't know which direction it's going to go in."

This was obviously a tricky tightrope line for the show to walk, but the second reason that "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" likely won't return is much more straightforward and tragic. Braugher passed away in December 2023 due to complications from lung cancer, and it is quite literally impossible to imagine the show without his deadpan Captain Raymond Holt.

In the wake of Andre Braugher's deeply tragic death, the stars of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" haven't, as a whole, addressed the possibility of returning to the fictional precinct ... except for one. In early December 2024, Melissa Fumero, who played the type-A detective-turned-sergeant Amy Santiago, spoke to ScreenRant while promoting the second season of the Peacock original "Based on a True Story," and her take on the situation was fairly unsurprising.

"Oh gosh," Fumero said when asked about any sort of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" reboot. "We've definitely all played with the idea, and we definitely all miss each other so much and miss spending our days together," she continued. "I don't think we could ever do it, though, without Andre, so I don't know that that would happen, but, yeah. I hope to work in other things with everyone. Stephanie and I have a podcast together now, and I think we'll just always be looking for ways to work together again."

Fumero does run a podcast with Stephanie Beatriz — who played Amy's colleague, friend, and fellow detective Rosa Diaz, an intimidating and highly private police officer who begrudgingly lets her coworkers past the walls she's built — called "More Better with Stephanie and Melissa," and the cast reunites with some regularity. Still, she's right; Braugher's absence would be far too glaring.

I cannot possibly stress this enough: the likelihood of a ninth season of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" is basically zero, but we can pretend for a moment and imagine that Dan Goor, Michael Schur, and the show's cast announce that it's happening. What could possibly happen in a follow-up season? Let's look at the series finale, "The Last Day," which aired in September 2021.

As Jake Peralta (Andy Samberg) prepares for his wife Amy and mentor Captain Holt to leave the precinct (to run a reform program), he organizes one last "heist," a running gag throughout the series (it typically happens on Halloween, serving as a contest for the entire precinct to battle over who wins). The heist has a twist, though; it's all meant to convince Amy that Jake should also leave "the Nine-Nine" and be a stay-at-home dad for their young son Mac, and even though Amy is surprised over Jake's decision, she's happy to support him for the good of their family. With just this storyline in mind, we could imagine that a ninth season of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" would focus on Amy running the police reform program (although, again, this would require that the show kill off Holt, which would be an unbelievably painful thing to do in the wake of Braugher's real-life passing) and see Jake raising Mac. Aside from the Peralta-Santiago family, we could follow Rosa, who leaves the precinct in the final season to become a private detective (that possibility actually feels the most interesting and promising), or Terry Jeffords (Terry Crews) taking over the 99th in Holt's stead. Once again, for the cheap seats in the back: this is very unlikely to happen.

Bearing in mind that a "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" reboot feels impossible without Andre Braugher, we could fantasize about the show's original cast returning to play these characters once again ... but the fact is that a bunch of them are probably too busy to even return to the project! Andy Samberg, for starters, has been working steadily as an actor, writer, and producer since the series ended; he took his first big dramatic role in the 2023 drama "Lee" alongside Kate Winslet, and he's also been finding time to stop by "Saturday Night Live" to play the once-hopeful first gentleman Doug Emhoff and drop a few new digital shorts courtesy of his group The Lonely Island in the process. Melissa Fumero has stayed busy with work on shows like "Digman!" (which is produced by Samberg), "Velma," "Night Court," and "Based on a True Story," and Stephanie Beatriz appeared in huge films like "In the Heights" and "Encanto" as well as Michael Schur's 2024 series "A Man on the Inside." 

I could go on and on about what the "Brooklyn Nine-Nine" cast is doing today, but the point is that not only is this talented group of folks plenty busy, but they're missing one of their beloved colleagues. If you want to relive the glory days of "Brooklyn Nine-Nine," it's available to stream on both Netflix and Peacock now.