Some legends don’t retire. They get exiled. Shemar Moore is back as Hondo Harrelson in S.W.A.T. Exiles, the Starz spinoff of the long-running CBS series, and the first teaser makes one thing clear: Hondo hasn’t lost a step, even if his new team isn’t convinced yet.
“Why bring a relic like Hondo back in?” new recruit Jude asks in the teaser. Cassidy doesn’t miss a beat: “Hondo Harrelson’s our new team leader? Guy’s a legend.”
The series finds Hondo pulled out of retirement after a high-profile mission goes sideways, handed a last-chance experimental S.W.A.T. unit of young, untested and unpredictable recruits and told to make something out of them. What nobody tells him upfront is that the team has been hand-picked to fail.
“He’s a little darker. He’s a little grumpier,” Moore told TV Insider. “He’s had some personal life issues that he’s going to have to fight his way back from. He’s been exiled, kicked out of S.W.A.T., and he’s been given an opportunity to come back in and put all the pieces together, but it’s kind of a stacked deck.”
The new cast includes Zyra Gorecki as Cassidy, Adain Bradley as Malik, Ronen Rubinstein as Jude, Freddy Miyares as Ethan, and Lucy Barrett as Sammy. Jay Harrington, Patrick St. Esprit and David Lim return as guest stars reprising their roles from the original series.
The teaser arrives with the series already renewed for a second season ahead of its premiere, as we previously reported. Moore broke the news himself on Instagram: “S.W.A.T. Exiles just got picked up for Season 2, baby.”
Jason Ning serves as showrunner and executive producer alongside Moore, Neal H. Moritz, Pavun Shetty, James Scura and Jon Cowan. Sony Pictures Television independently produced the 10-episode first season.
S.W.A.T. Exiles premieres September 25 on Starz.