It’s been an ongoing discussion for a while. With 9-1-1 now on ABC and The Rookie also on the same network, and both set in Los Angeles, it just makes sense. If two shows were ever going to do a crossover, it would be these two, right? 9-1-1 has, after all, already done crossovers not just with spinoff 9-1-1: Lone Star, but also with The Bachelor. If ABC can pull a 9-1-1 crossover with The Bachelor, then The Rookie shouldn’t be a problem. Right? Right?
Wrong. Even though a few of the actors on both shows have talked about the possibility before The Rookie showrunner Alexi Hawley told TVLine that the possibility wasn’t being discussed. He also explained the reasoning behind it. “To me, that’s a hard crossover,” he said, “just because you have an expectation that you’re going to see [9-1-1 characters] all the time” if you do one crossover. “If we’re both in the same universe in Los Angeles, how are we not stumbling over them all the time?”
And, like… in the real world, that makes sense. We would expect that! But audiences are smarter than Hawley seemingly gives them credit for. The Arrowverse and the MCU have conditioned us to understand that crossovers won’t always happen. That doesn’t mean we don’t want them every once in a while.
Hey, take One Chicago for example. The franchise hasn’t done a full crossover in five years (though one is coming!) and barely did any little ones for years because of the pandemic. The Chicago Fire paramedics continued to routinely go into Chicago Med, and so did the Chicago P.D. cops. And audiences understood the restrictions.
This isn’t even the only universe where it’s happened. Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, and Law & Order: Organized crime exist in the same universe, in the same city, and rarely do crossovers. Just ask Benson and Stabler fans! And sure, fans are never happy about that, but that’s less about the crossover and more about the 84 years they’ve been waiting for that ship to set sail.
Plus, CBS’s NCIS and NCIS: Sydney exist in the same universe as well, and we still haven’t seen a crossover. And NCIS wasn’t crossing over with NCIS: Hawai’i all that often when that was still on, either. And when they did, people understood it was a one-off.
So, a 9-1-1 and The Rookie crossover is easy. All Hawley has to do is trust his audience. They’ll enjoy watching the characters interact once, and if it never happens again, they’ll go on to write fanfic about these characters having a beer after a shift or something like MCU fans do. It’s just the way it is.
