Hawaii Five-0 will look very different when it returns to CBS in the fall. Two original cast members will depart ahead of Season 8, and the show is taking some big steps to fill in the holes that will be left by their absences. Fans will see a lot more of one returning character that has been bumped up to regular status, and two more characters have officially been cast to debut in Season 8.
Ian Anthony Dale has been promoted to regular status, meaning that Adam Noshimuri will be around more frequently than ever before. He made his debut back in Season 2, and he has been a recurring character ever since. Adam will be recruited by McGarrett to join the team at the Five-0. No details are yet available about how Adam's relationship with Kono will work moving forward. Adam and Kono have been married since Season 5, and Kono will not be around next season.
Meaghan Rath of Being Human and Cooper Barrett's Guide to Surviving Life will be one of the new additions to Hawaii Five-0 for Season 8. She'll play a former Police Academy student by the name of Tani Rey. McGarrett finds Tani working at a hotel pool as a lifeguard, which he believes is squandering her abilities as she was a top candidate for the police force prior to being kicked out of the Academy.
The other new addition will be Beulah Koale of The Last Saint and Common Ground. Koale will play Junior Reigns, who is a former Navy SEAL. He has recently returned from serving overseas, and he asks fellow Navy SEAL McGarrett for a job. Not ready to give up on helping others, Junior wants to use the skills he learned in the Navy to help the Five-0 team.
The promotion of Ian Anthony Dale and the castings of Meaghan Rath and Beulah Koale have the potential to freshen up Five-0 in the eighth season, but the changes come at a cost. Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park officially left the series last month, and we learned that they could not reach an agreement with CBS about their salaries. Although CBS reportedly offered large increases, the figures were apparently not what Kim and Park were looking for as they moved toward their eighth year as part of the core of Hawaii Five-0. It's difficult to imagine Five-0 without them. Hopefully they'll be written out in a way that leaves the door open for guest arcs every once in a while.
Hawaii Five-0 will return for Season 8 on on Friday, September 29 at 9 p.m. ET on CBS. Swing by our summer TV guide to see what you can watch nowadays while we wait for fall TV season to kick off in a couple of months, and don't forget to take a look at our list of reboots and revivals that are in the works for the small screen.
