On a Boston duck boat in the summer of 2026, Will Estes looked out at a crowd of people holding up their phones and knew the secret was over.
He was in town to play Jamie Reagan again, for the first time since Blue Bloods ended, and he was sitting next to the man who played his big brother for 14 years. “When there was a crowd of people with their phones out when we were on the duck boat, I was like, ‘We’re not keeping this under wraps anymore, right? There’s no way it’s not on the internet somewhere,'” he told TVLine.
He was right. Fans spotted them filming, and in August Donnie Wahlberg made it official with a set photo of the two of them side by side at a table. “Welcome (back) to the Family! Jamie Reagan! aka Will Estes! #BostonBlue,” he wrote on his Instagram Story.
The short answer: Will Estes returned as Jamie Reagan in Boston Blue Season 2, Episode 5, “Blood Diamonds,” which aired on CBS on November 6, 2026. No second appearance has been announced, and the show’s creators have called it a one-off for now. Estes says he’d happily come back, thinks a visit with Vanessa Ray’s Eddie could “100 percent” happen, and says a Jamie and Eddie spinoff has been discussed but is not happening “at this time.”
“A Heavy Lift” to Get Back
When Blue Bloods wrapped its 14-season run in December 2024, Estes stepped away from acting for a while. Coming back wasn’t as simple as putting the uniform on again.
“What was the most complicated part? Just getting to set for me,” he told Us Weekly. “It was a heavy lift for me getting back to work. I was like, ‘I gotta eat a lot of dark chocolate. Make sure I can do this right.'”
He admitted he was “really worried about it until we shot the first scene.” And Wahlberg wasn’t much help with the nerves, he joked. “Donnie’s no help whatsoever,” he said, before adding, “He is super helpful in a lot of other ways.”
The call itself came from Wahlberg and Boston Blue creators Brandon Margolis and Brandon Sonnier. “They were like, ‘Would you want to be on the show?’ And I was like, ‘Yes! What time? What time are you guys free?'” Estes told TVLine. Once the scenes started, the old character came straight back. He said the writing “felt like putting on a broken-in baseball glove. It just fit.”
The Talk the Reagan Brothers Never Had
A lot has changed for Jamie since we last saw him. He’s an NYPD lieutenant now, and he and Eddie have a little boy, Joey Francis, named after the brother Jamie and Danny lost, Joe, and their father, Frank. Danny, meanwhile, made sergeant in Boston, where he moved to be near his son Sean (Mika Amonsen).
CBS’s official logline kept it simple: Jamie’s visit “takes an unexpected turn when he and Danny are drawn into a diamond heist linked to a violent family feud, forcing the brothers to confront lingering tensions of their own.”
Jamie comes to town for a police conference, the brothers end up working a case together, and the thing Jamie has been carrying finally comes out. Danny left New York around the time Jamie became a dad. In the episode, Jamie tells him: “You were always there whether I wanted you to be or not and then the second I wanted to ask you how to be a dad. What to do when Joey wouldn’t sleep or when Eddie didn’t want me to go back on the street. You weren’t there.”
Danny answers that he had to be in Boston, because Sean needed him. Jamie understands. By the end, Danny tells his little brother he’s proud of him, as a brother, a cop and now a father.
For Estes, that line meant a lot. “It’s huge,” he said. “It’s a resolution of a major conflict. It’s that evolution and resolution. It’s where it needed to go for a long time.”
He had expected the two of them to sort it out much earlier. “There’s always been a sort of persistent tension between the two characters. I thought maybe we would resolve it years ago on Blue Bloods,” he told Us. “And in this episode we do.”
“Some of It Wasn’t Acting”
The most honest part of the story happened off camera. Both men have said they hadn’t talked in a while before this episode.
“We played all this history, but we have history off screen, too, and we haven’t spoken in a while…. It was very healing… and wonderful… and emotional,” Wahlberg said in October.
Estes didn’t pretend 14 years had been easy. “There were parts of ‘Blue Bloods’ that were hard. You don’t do anything for 14 years without some things being tough,” he said. “But there were things that were hard, and I hadn’t connected with Donnie for a while. To see him again and connect with him and do this story, it was like therapy, I think. There were some things on screen, I think, that echoed life off screen. And so some of it wasn’t acting.”
He didn’t go into what had been hard, and he doesn’t have to. Two brothers on screen finally talked it out, and so did the two actors.
Will Jamie Come Back to Boston Blue?
Nothing is booked. Before the episode aired, Margolis told TV Insider, “As of now, this is a one-off story with Jamie.” He also said the team had “long admired” Estes and called him “such a cool dude and a really professional, lovely human.”
Estes made it clear the door is open from his side. “I’m game. I would love it. It was a great experience,” he told Us Weekly after the episode aired. “It was so fun. If they want to write for me, I’ll be there.”
He also knows it isn’t his call, and he had some fun with that. “I’m going to give you the phone number of both the Brandons when we get off, and you can call them six times a day,” he joked.
Asked by TVLine whether he’d come back on a recurring basis, he didn’t hesitate. “One-hundred percent. Yeah, I’m 100% here for it. Put me in, coach!”
He’s not the only Reagan to make the trip. Erin and Grandpa Henry got there first, which makes Jamie the third Reagan to cross over. Wahlberg would love Frank to visit too, but he has said Tom Selleck’s Frank would need a truly special episode. We looked at that in Will Tom Selleck Return as Frank Reagan on Boston Blue?
What About Eddie?
Eddie wasn’t in the episode, though she sent her regards. Vanessa Ray did turn up in Boston in summer 2026, but it wasn’t to film anything. She visited the set while the episode was in production.
Estes never saw her there. He ran into her somewhere else first. “This is a crazy story,” he told TVLine. “I hadn’t seen her for the longest time, and she was on the flight over [from] New York. I bumped into her on the plane, and I was like, ‘Are you doing ‘Boston Blue’? I’m doing ‘Boston Blue.’ Are we doing it at the same time? Did I get a revision?’ And she was like, ‘No, but I’m going to be in Boston, and I’m going to come to set.'”
By the time she came by, he wasn’t there. “I was working, and on my day off, I get back in bed,” he said.
A Jamie and Eddie visit is the one fans want most, and Estes would love it too. “They don’t let me in the writers’ rooms, so I don’t — I’m never a part of those conversations,” he told Us, but he believes a joint appearance with Ray could “100 percent” happen down the line. To TVLine, he put it this way: “Nobody talked to me about it, but that’s above my pay grade anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised if those conversations happened, and I hope they did.”
The Spinoff Fans Keep Asking About
Then came the big question: a Jamie and Eddie series of their own. Estes answered with a smirk.
“What do I say that promotes the idea?” he said. “We have talked about it, but not in a capacity that I can give you an air date on. So, no at this time.”
That’s an honest answer, and it’s worth reading the way he said it. It’s been talked about. Nothing has been ordered or announced, and he isn’t promising one. For now it’s a hope, not a show.
The same goes for a Blue Bloods movie. “That was, I think, Donnie said that first. He was like, ‘Blue Bloods the movie.’ So listen, I’m game,” Estes said.
“They Don’t, but They Do”
The family is still close, even without a group chat. “There’s no group chat, but yeah, absolutely, I’m good friends with a lot of the people that I worked with,” Estes said. He named Marisa Ramirez and Ray, and called Len Cariou “one of my favorite people on the planet.” He said he’d spoken to Tom Selleck “not that long ago.”
What really stayed with him after the show ended was the people who watched it. “I’ve had people tell me that they became police officers because of my character,” he told TVLine. “I’ve had people tell me they sat and watched the show every week with their mom, who’s now passed away, and the show is almost a connection to that person.”
Strangers still come up to him, especially NYPD officers and their families. “They’re like, ‘Hey, I know you!’ And it’s like, they don’t, but they do,” he said.
That’s probably why one hour in Boston landed the way it did. Jamie got to say what hurt, Danny got to say he was proud, and the actor behind the youngest Reagan says he’ll be back whenever they ask. “If they want to write for me,” he said, “I’ll be there.”
