• ABC has given a straight-to-series order to an untitled Grey’s Anatomy spinoff set in rural West Texas, premiering midseason 2027
• The show is co-created and written by Shonda Rhimes and current Grey’s showrunner Meg Marinis, with Ellen Pompeo executive producing
• It’s the first Grey’s franchise entry not set on the West Coast and the first not built around a series regular from the mothership
• The spinoff will likely share a Thursday 10 p.m. time slot with Grey’s Anatomy, airing back-to-back during midseason
• Rhimes writing the new series marks her first creative work on the Grey’s franchise since Derek Shepherd’s death in Season 11

Twenty-one years in, the Grey’s Anatomy universe is heading somewhere it has never gone before — and it’s a long way from Seattle. ABC has handed a straight-to-series order to an untitled Grey’s Anatomy spinoff set in rural West Texas, co-created by Shonda Rhimes and current Grey’s showrunner Meg Marinis, with Ellen Pompeo on board as executive producer. The new drama is set to premiere in midseason 2027.

The show is described as an “edgy drama about a team at a rural West Texas medical center — the last chance for care before miles of nowhere.” That logline alone signals a pretty sharp departure from the glossy, relationship-tangled halls of Grey Sloan Memorial. This is frontier medicine. High stakes, scarce resources, and a whole lot of open road between patients and their next option.

Marinis, a Houston native and University of Texas at Austin graduate who started her Grey’s career as a writers assistant in Season 3 and spent two decades working her way up to showrunner, didn’t hide how personal this one is. “I am incredibly excited to expand the Grey’s Anatomy universe,” she said. “This opportunity will bring new characters and stories to life that will embody the same heart, emotion and connection audiences have loved from Grey’s for more than two decades — all set in my home state of Texas. I am so grateful to Shonda Rhimes for creating this dynamic world and feel so fortunate that I get to be a part of it.”

What Makes This Spinoff Different From Private Practice and Station 19

This is the fourth series in the Grey’s Anatomy franchise — after the mothership, Private Practice, and Station 19 — but it breaks the mold in some significant ways. For starters, it’s the first entry not set on the West Coast. Seattle and Los Angeles have been the franchise’s twin homes since 2005. West Texas is a completely different world, tonally and geographically.

It’s also the first Grey’s spinoff that won’t be built around a series regular from the original show. Kate Walsh’s Addison Montgomery headlined Private Practice after departing Seattle Grace to give Meredith and Derek their shot. Jason George’s Ben Warren anchored Station 19. This new series is expected to center on an entirely fresh group of doctors — though sources indicate it will still be connected to the Grey’s world through one or more characters. Fans have already started speculating: Jake Borelli’s Levi Schmitt relocated to Texas with his life partner in Season 21, which would make for a pretty tidy bridge.

Whether ABC uses an episode of the mothership as a backdoor pilot — the way it did for both Private Practice and Station 19 — hasn’t been decided yet. The episode order for the spinoff is also still TBD, though it’s expected to land somewhere around nine episodes, in line with recent ABC midseason entries.

One thing that is confirmed: Rhimes will write the new series. That’s a bigger deal than it might sound. The last time she wrote or co-wrote a Grey’s Anatomy episode was the Season 11 gut-punch “How to Save a Life” — the one where Derek Shepherd died. Before that, she wrote the original pilot and the backdoor pilot for Private Practice. Her return to the franchise as a writer, not just a producer, is a signal of how seriously Shondaland is treating this.

The Scheduling Plan and What It Means for Grey’s Season 23

The spinoff and its parent show are expected to share Grey’s Anatomy’s Thursday 10 p.m. slot on ABC, behind 9-1-1 and the recently ordered 9-1-1: Nashville. The plan would have Grey’s Anatomy air in the fall, with the new Texas series taking over the slot at midseason — a programming strategy ABC has been leaning into hard, having also expanded The Rookie into The Rookie: North next season.

Grey’s Anatomy has already been renewed for Season 23, which is expected to premiere this fall. The show closed out Season 22 on genuinely strong numbers — 5.99 million total viewers in MP+7, up 9% over the prior week and more than doubling its Live+Same Day audience. For a show in its 22nd year, that’s not a series in decline. That’s a series with real runway left.

It’s also worth noting that the spinoff is being produced by Shondaland and 20th Television — and because it’s a spinoff of an existing series rather than an original, it falls outside of Rhimes’ exclusive deal with Netflix, where Shondaland has been based since 2017 producing hits like the Bridgerton franchise. ABC gets this one.

Rhimes and producer Betsy Beers — who exec produced Station 19 alongside Pompeo — are both on board. Whether Marinis will serve as showrunner on both Grey’s and the new series simultaneously is still being worked out, though it’s apparently doable: her predecessor Krista Vernoff ran both Grey’s and Station 19 at the same time.

There’s also a parallel worth watching at CBS, where a still-untitled medical drama from Walker creator Anna Fricke — starring Jared Padalecki as a doctor running a mobile clinic in rural Texas — received a development room order last November and is still delivering scripts. Whether the Grey’s spinoff announcement affects that project’s fate is an open question.

For now, the Grey’s Anatomy universe is packing its bags and heading south. New doctors, new terrain, new stories — and Shonda Rhimes back at the keyboard for the first time in over a decade. “Miles of nowhere” has never sounded so compelling.

The post Grey’s Anatomy Is Getting a Texas Spinoff for 2027 appeared first on Cream.

• ABC has ordered The Rookie: North to series for the 2026-27 season, with a midseason premiere expected.
• Jay Ellis stars as Alex Holland, a man who joins the Pierce County Police Department after a violent home invasion upends his life.
• Nathan Fillion appears in the pilot as John Nolan and executive produces alongside creator Alexi Hawley.
• The order is for 10 episodes, with crossovers between North and the mothership series already in the works.
• This is The Rookie’s second spinoff attempt, following the one-season run of The Rookie: Feds in 2022-23.

The Rookie is back in the franchise business. ABC has officially ordered The Rookie: North to series, handing Jay Ellis his next leading role and giving Nathan Fillion’s long-running cop drama a second shot at building a universe. The pickup, for 10 episodes, was confirmed just hours before Disney’s upfronts presentation on Tuesday, May 12 — and the deal between ABC and indie studio Lionsgate Television reportedly didn’t even close until Sunday night. Classic upfronts drama.

The new series is set in Washington state and follows Alex Holland (Ellis), a man who, as the logline puts it, “believed his midlife wasn’t worthy of a crisis.” Then a violent home invasion changes everything, pushing him to join the Pierce County Police Department as its oldest rookie. Policing a terrain that stretches from the urban coast to the rural forest — where backup isn’t just five minutes away — Alex has to prove himself to his skeptical training officer, his fellow rookies, and maybe most of all, himself.

It’s a premise that echoes the original show’s DNA while pushing into new territory, both geographically and emotionally. Where The Rookie is rooted in Los Angeles, North films in Vancouver and leans into the Pacific Northwest’s isolation as part of its identity.

Nathan Fillion Is Already Showing Up

Fillion isn’t just lending his name to this one. He appears in the North pilot as his Rookie character John Nolan — a move that immediately signals how connected the two shows are meant to feel. He also executive produces both series, cementing his role as the franchise’s anchor.

Creator Alexi Hawley, who wrote and directed the pilot, will serve as showrunner on both The Rookie (heading into its ninth season) and North simultaneously. He’s done this kind of juggling act before — there was a stretch where he was running The Rookie, The Rookie: Feds, and his Netflix series The Recruit at the same time. “I have a really good team,” he told Deadline.

As for crossovers, Hawley is already thinking about it — carefully. “Maybe a couple episodes, or two or three episodes a season” is what he’s envisioning for stories that bridge the two shows. But he’s realistic about the logistics. “It’s harder obviously, with the Vancouver or the Pacific Northwest of it all and LA,” he said. “Feds was designed on purpose with a lot of crossovers.” The mothership series is set to premiere in January, which puts both shows running concurrently in midseason — exactly the window you’d want for those kinds of storylines to land.

A Deep Ensemble Behind Ellis

Ellis leads a cast that includes Chris Sullivan, Karen Fukuhara, Froy Gutierrez, Janet Montgomery, Mya Lowe, and Malik Watson. Hawley executive produces alongside Fillion, Mark Gordon, Bill Norcross, and Michelle Chapman. Ellis himself is on board as a producer. Lionsgate Television and 20th Television are co-producing.

The pilot order came back in November, after the project had been in development for over a year. That it made it to series is a win — the other pilot ABC ordered this cycle, a comedy called Do You Want Kids?, didn’t make the cut.

Learning From The Rookie: Feds

This isn’t ABC’s first rodeo with a Rookie spinoff. The Rookie: Feds, starring Niecy Nash-Betts, launched in 2022 and was canceled after a single season in 2023. That show also leaned heavily on crossovers with the original — but it never quite built its own footing. North is clearly being positioned differently, with a distinct setting, a grittier tonal premise, and a lead in Ellis who brings a different kind of energy than Fillion’s everyman warmth.

Crossovers, when they work, are genuinely good TV business. ABC knows this — 9-1-1 and 9-1-1: Nashville pulled one off this season, and Grey’s Anatomy and Station 19 built years of shared storytelling before Station 19 ended. The blueprint exists. Now it’s on Hawley and Ellis to make North worth the trip.

“Alex must prove to his skeptical training officer, his fellow rookies and himself, that he’s finally found something worthy of the fight.” If the show can deliver on that promise, the franchise might finally have its second act.

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