After what has been eight amazing seasons, SWAT’s time on CBS is officially coming to an end, but it seems CBS will be throwing one final curveball at the show and its fans!
As SWAT season 8 comes to a close, CBS is shaking up its schedule and moving the show to a new timeslot for the remainder of the season. That’s right, SWAT is on the move, yet again.
Fans will recall that season 8 kicked off in the opening timeslot on Friday nights in the fall, before taking over the closing hour on Friday nights after Blue Bloods wrapped its final season. Since returning in January, SWAT has closed out Friday nights in the 10 p.m. time slot on CBS, following new episodes of NCIS: Sydney and Fire Country.
Following its run in the closing slot, SWAT will be airing an hour earlier in the night at 9/8c, beginning with the show’s May 2 broadcast. The plan is for the next two episodes of SWAT to air following a double-pump of Hollywood Squares, which will be airing across the opening hour of the night now that NCIS: Sydney has wrapped its run.
After Hollywood Squares wraps its first season on May 9, the two-part SWAT series finale will lead out of a new episode of The Greatest @Home Videos. SWAT will then kick off the two-part finale at 9/8c, followed by the final episode at 10/9c.
Interestingly, CBS is billing the SWAT series finale as a two-part event. However, it sounds like this might be a case of two separate episodes rather than an event that will carry over into two hours seamlessly, like we saw with the finales for Matlock and Fire Country. The two episodes will each test Hondo and the team, with the official series finale finding SWAT HQ under attack with 20-Squad literally fighting for their lives!
To recap, here’s what CBS’s Friday night lineup will look like over the course of the next three weeks:
Friday, May 2
8 p.m. - Hollywood Squares (NEW)
8:30 p.m. - Hollywood Squares (NEW)
9 p.m. - SWAT (NEW)
10 p.m. - Fire Country (Rerun)
Friday, May 9
8 p.m. - Hollywood Squares (NEW)
8:30 p.m. - Hollywood Squares (NEW, Season finale)
9 p.m. - SWAT (NEW)
10 p.m. - Fire Country (Rerun)
Friday, May 16
8 p.m. - The Greatest #AtHome Videos (NEW)
9 p.m. - SWAT (NEW, Series Finale - Part 1)
10 p.m. - SWAT (NEW, Series Finale - Part 2)
Needless to say, the upcoming CBS Friday night schedule is going to make for an interesting stretch, but an exciting one nonetheless!