CBS' primetime lineup is going to look very different in the fall 2025 TV schedule than it did in the spring, largely due to the cancellations of FBI: Most Wanted and FBI: International. The original series is now the last FBI standing on the network, and the Season 8 premiere has a big cliffhanger to resolve. After the credits rolled on Season 7 with Isobel (Alana De La Garza) collapsing without a pulse, will she be back for Season 8?
Well, I was so confident that CBS wouldn't spoil even a bit of it when there's still more than a month to go before the premiere that I almost missed a big clue that the network recently released.
FBI's Season 8 Premiere
CBS dropped a lot of fall TV news this week, including for other crime shows like Elsbeth with Stephen Colbert as a guest star and Boston Blue taking Donnie Wahlberg to Massachusetts. But FBI was arguably the network's biggest finale cliffhanger at the end of the 2024-2025 season, with Isobel's injuries catching up with her just after it seemed like the good guys won. The stars didn't spoil Isobel's fate back in the spring, so the wait has been on since May to learn if she lives or dies.
Well, the official episode description for the premiere (courtesy of CBS) reveals that the title is "Takeover," and there will be more happening than just Maggie (Missy Peregrym) and Co. chasing bad guys. Take a look:
After a federal judge disappears, a routine investigation takes a dark turn as the team uncovers that the judge had been searching for his missing son on a secluded island on the city’s edge, where authority has crumbled. Meanwhile, reality weighs heavy on Jubal as he takes on a new leadership role.
Does Jubal (Jeremy Sisto) taking on a new leadership role mean that Isobel is dead and gone? Of course not, and the only thing I'm fairly confident about guessing from this information is that the time jump between Season 7 and Season 8 won't be too terribly long. It seems that Isobel is out of commission, at the very least. That sentence about Jubal in the episode description isn't what I originally missed, though.
What The First Photos Tell Us About The Season 8 Premiere
One of the two first-look photos doesn't really shed a lot of light on details for the Season 8 premiere, but I still always love to see Maggie and OA (Zeeko Zaki) in action together. They're one of my favorite on-screen TV partnerships, and the recent video of Missy Peregrym pranking Zeeko Zaki behind the scenes was a fun look at how the actors compare to their characters. Take a look at the duo in Season 8:
At least one thing hasn't changed in the wake of Isobel's collapse and a cast shakeup on the way: Maggie and OA look ready for anything together. On a much more serious note, the thing that has changed is pictured in the second first-look photo below, and I initially missed it. Take a look:
That'll teach me to zoom in on pictures if I want to get all the clues out of them! I'd focused on Jubal's somewhat inscrutable expression as he stood in the mostly empty office when I first saw the photo, and it wasn't until a second look that I zoomed in to spot the "ISOBEL CASTILLE" nameplate on the desk.
Jubal standing in a generic empty office? Totally fine – 26 Fed is full of rooms that look similar. Jubal standing in the empty office that used to belong to Isobel? Much more concerning! I'm still not going to take this to mean that Isobel died between the end of Season 7 and start of Season 8, but the wait for the October premiere just got a little bit more nerve-wracking. Suffice it to say that I'm going to look more closely at photos moving forward!
Will Isobel Be Back In Season 8?
Even if we get the best-case scenario of Isobel sustaining some injuries that she just couldn't shake off before the start of Season 8, there's a distinct element of tragedy that she had this terrible health scare. In Season 7, she had the opportunity to retire to a quiet and safe life with her new husband, but decided that her work at the Bureau was "not finished."
When I spoke with Alana De La Garza and Jeremy Sisto as a duo ahead of the finale, the actress doubled down on Isobel not having any regrets about "not stepping away," then described her character as a "justice junkie" at the "core of her soul."
It was a sincere explanation, made funnier when the two costars started spitballing on what Isobel could do if she ever did retire. The actress suggested that she would "wither up and die" before deciding on "tennis club." Sisto went a bit further and pitched that she'd "work for the CIA" and head on over to the set of CIA, a new show set in the FBI universe.
Realistically, I'd be surprised if the Season 7 finale was the last time that we see Alana De La Garza as Isobel Castille, and I'm guessing/hoping that she'll be back fairly early in Season 8 after recovering from what caused her to collapse without a pulse. Perhaps all the clues will simply lead to a reveal early in the premiere that Isobel is on the mend and just needs Jubal to fill in for her temporarily.
Another possibility is that FBI is writing Alana De La Garza out for a bit, with Isobel's injuries as a good excuse to briefly bench the character. Other characters are left out of episodes here and there, and recovering from a near-death experience is a pretty great reason for the SAC to step back. It's all speculation at this point, but FBI did something similar to temporarily write Missy Peregrym out as Maggie in Season 4.
Plus, other shows in the Dick Wolf TV universe have had to make cuts to the episode counts for series regulars this season. Maybe there are just practical reasons why Isobel might not be fully in action in October. Or maybe I'm wrong on just about every count, and I'll just have to wait for the premiere to learn the truth!
Tune in to CBS on Monday, October 13 at 9 p.m. ET for the Season 8 premiere of FBI, followed by Watson Season 2. This will be the first time that FBI doesn't air on a Tuesday, with CBS allotting all three hours this season to the NCIS franchise. The show was also originally set to be paired in primetime with Tom Ellis' CIA; that series' delay to midseason resulted in Watson being switched from a winter return to a fall premiere of Season 2.
As a fan of both FBI and Watson, I'm certainly not complaining! In the meantime, you can also the Season 7 finale of FBI streaming with a Paramount+ subscription.
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