‘Boston Blue’: Why Danny & Sean Reagan Are Growing Apart in Season 2 — for Good Reason

Seasoned detective Danny Reagan (Donnie Wahlberg) and his rookie cop son Sean (Mika Amonsen) are getting some time apart in Boston Blue Season 2 for good reason. Both are at a turning point in their careers, series creators Brandon Margolis and Brandon Sonnier tell TV Insider, deciding what they want their futures to look like. While they’re both following in the Reagan law enforcement family footsteps, it will be important for Danny and Sean to chart different courses in the second season, and most importantly for Sean, to have different mentors. He’s getting them in Season 2, premiering October 9 on CBS.

Sean is in his second year as a police officer at the Boston Police Department, along with his best friend and partner on the force, Jonah Silver (Marcus Scribner), who also hails from a law enforcement family. Season 1 set up some existential crises for Jonah about being a Black cop and what that meant for his place in his community. In Season 2, that experience is making Jonah experiment with more community-focused police work, while Sean is taking a more traditional route like his family members before him.

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Danny, meanwhile, is in talks for a major promotion, one he had been dancing around at the NYPD for a while. This increased responsibility, combined with moving in with his girlfriend, Detective Maria Baez (Marisa Ramirez), and her young daughter, Elena (twin sisters Eleanor and Penelope Yataco), is making Danny shift around his focus more often. He moved to Boston to be closer to Sean, but he’ll find that Sean is in a phase of his life where he’s better served by new mentors.

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“It’s an opportunity where Danny has to work harder to spend as much time with Sean as he was able to in the past, and he’s checking in with him and observing what he’s learning and what kind of cop he’s becoming,” Margolis told TV Insider, “but there are opportunities for Sean to find new mentorship outside of Danny’s sphere.”

Sonnier said that the healthy distance between the father and son is “one of the fun things about this season.”

“Yes, Danny came to Boston to be there for Sean, but he’s learning that there are other ways that he can be there for Sean,” Sonnier explained. “He doesn’t have to be over his shoulder all of the time. It’s about being there when Sean needs it and stepping back when it’s time to let Sean venture out on his own.”

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Danny’s promotion will inspire Sean to think about “his own future and what his path and what his ladder climbing could look like,” said Margolis. “And we’re also going to expand the universe of Sean and Jonah’s precinct this year with some new characters that step in as mentors and figures that can inspire Jonah and Sean to try their version of policing.”

In the Boston Blue Season 2 premiere, grandpa Henry Reagan (Len Cariou) lends a hand to Danny, Sean, Jonah, and Lena (Sonequa Martin-Green) in a case about a Boston Strangler copycat killer. The young cops will get a glimpse of how Danny’s little brother, Jamie Reagan (Will Estes), handles police work as well when he appears in Boston Blue Season 2 Episode 5.

Boston Blue, Season 2 Premiere, Friday, October 9, 10/9c, CBS