Nathan Fillion Confirms 'The Rookie' Season 9 Filming Start Date [Exclusive]

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Published Jul 25, 2026, 7:35 PM EDT

Working with James Gunn in the DCU, Nathan Fillion has become one of the most popular actors in the world in the last few years. After making his debut as Guy Gardner/Green Lantern in Superman, Fillion reprised the role in Peacemaker Season 2, and he’s confirmed to return this summer in Lanterns, the new HBO series launching on August 16. The DCU isn’t the first time that Fillion has worked with James Gunn, either. Back when Gunn was at Marvel working on the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, Fillion starred as different characters in the first and third volumes of Gunn’s epic space trilogy. Fillion is also widely known and loved for his performances in older shows like Castle and Firefly, but there’s another more recent series that’s become his go-to watch for fans around the world.

The show in question is The Rookie, the ABC police procedural that first aired back in 2018 and has been putting out new seasons on a yearly basis since. With eight seasons under its belt, ABC renewed The Rookie for Season 9 earlier this year, but it’s expected that the next season will feature fewer episodes than seasons past. Speaking to Collider’s Steve Weintraub alongside the rest of the cast, series creator Alexi Hawley confirmed that Season 9 “started filming on Tuesday this last week,” while also confirming that filming on the new spin-off, The Rookie: North, starts shooting “in a few weeks” this August. Additionally, ABC held a panel for The Rookie this weekend at San Diego Comic-Con, where Nathan Fillion (a day after making a surprise appearance at the Lanterns panel) confirmed that he starts working on Season 4 this coming Monday.

Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.

Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.

Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.

Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.

Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.

Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.

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