The Season 5 premiere of Fire Country on the 2026 TV schedule marked a monumental moment for the show. For the first time since its series premiere, the CBS drama added a new regular to the cast. For the first four seasons, no one came to stay for good in Edgewater other than the core group who were introduced in the pilot. However, now Olivia Thirlby has joined the cast to play CJ Ryan, and I spoke to Max Thieriot about why now was the time to add her.
For the first three seasons of Fire Country, the cast stayed the exact same. Then, in Season 4, Stephanie Arcila’s Gabriela left town, and Billy Burke’s Vince died. That created the first major cast shakeup for the show. However, the start of Season 5 marks another one with the addition of Thirlby, who plays a firefighter in Philly who has found herself in Edgewater for mysterious reasons. Speaking to all of that, Thieriot, who co-created the show and plays Bode, said:
Obviously, we've had some of our characters leave the show, and it really is like you gotta have a full firehouse. And I think as we kind of get into this fifth season, it's important, I think, to shake things up in a way and just sort of like add new life into the show. And a big way of doing that is to add new characters who can really sort of bring just new stories to the series, and that's really what she does.
We’ve seen Jared Padalecki show up to play a firefighter, Shawn Hatosy stopped by for a few episodes last season to play a battalion chief in Station 42, and we were introduced to Sheriff Country’s lead, Morena Baccarin’s Sheriff Mickey, on Fire Country. However, an actor hasn’t been hired to play a full-time role on this show since the first episode. So, the introduction of CJ is monumental. We’ve already seen that her energy is different from the rest, and she seems poised to shake things up.
The addition of her really opens a new door for the cast and crew of Fire Country, too, as Max Thieriot told me:
Her character allows us to sort of reshape our current characters and allows us to, I don't know, get to know them also in different ways because we have a new person, so she has a new perspective. And it provides so many different and exciting opportunities. And then I think just having somebody on incident too, who has such a different approach and different way of working and different perspective and different way of doing the job, is exciting.
Speaking of that new perspective, Thieriot detailed why Thirlby’s character brings that to the show. It’s because she’s new to town, and in a small town, a new person can totally change things. So, this Philly firefighter moving to Edgewater won’t just change her; it will change the people around her too, as the Bode actor explained:
I think she adds just such a new dynamic and new perspective, and she's just a very different feeling character, you know? Especially because she's not from Edgewater, and I think it's really fun because it allows us to introduce a new character that we get to unpack and sort of get to know again from the beginning and really kind of invest in her personal journey and her storyline in a fresh way. And at the same time, we get to see how she sort of fits into the puzzle and how she fits in with our characters and what she brings out of them, and what they all sort of bring out of each other.
Max Thieriot closed out his thoughts on CJ by saying her “baggage and her own past” will be explored in the show, and he said he thinks the “audience is going to love her.” Well, one episode in, and I’m already feeling that way. She’s confident, outspoken, and it seems like both she and Bode have a lot to learn from each other.
Overall, I really want to know more about this strong-willed and mysterious firefighter, and I’m thrilled that we know we’ll get to do just that. CJ and Olivia Thirlby are in it for the long haul, and I’m so excited to see how her introduction impacts everyone in Edgewater.
Now, to see just that, you can catch new episodes of Fire Country every Friday at 9 p.m. ET on CBS, and you can stream it the next day with a Paramount+ subscription.
