Fans of CBS’ FBI had a lot to be excited about at the start of the fall 2024 TV schedule, not least because the hit drama had already been renewed for another three seasons. There was one loss that would start out Season 7, though, as Katherine Renee Kane’s exit as Agent Tiffany Wallace had been announced over summer hiatus. Even as we look ahead to the 2025 TV schedule, I’m still missing Tiff as part of the team, and I’m reflecting on the showrunner’s story behind Missy Peregrym and Kane’s surprisingly emotional final scene together as Maggie and Tiff.
The most eventful part of Tiff’s final case with the team was of course Scola getting stabbed in the leg and needing a tourniquet from his partner as their last interaction, with a small moment of hand-holding that John Boyd dubbed the “clear and obvious choice.” Her final moment with Maggie was a whole lot less bloody, coming toward the end of the Season 7 premiere. (You can find the episode streaming with a Paramount+ subscription.)
Maggie wanted to get a drink with Tiff before the latter headed down to Georgia to be with family and asked for what made her decide to finally call it quits on the Bureau. Tiff explained that she just wanted closure after Hakim at the end of Season 6 and was moving to Georgia to be with her sister. On paper, it’s not all that emotional of an interaction until Maggie hugged her former coworker, but actresses Katherine Renee Kane and Missy Peregrym really sold the emotion of it.
And as a fan of Kane as Tiff, I asked new showrunner Mike Weiss way back in the fall about why the premiere took the time to give Maggie and Tiff a tearful goodbye. After addressing how the FBI team wanted to give Tiff and Kane a “proper goodbye,” Weiss explained:
I think it's not BS. [For] Tiff and Scola, of course their goodbye was going to be her saving his life at the top of an escalator at a train station. That made sense. And then, to be totally honest, Missy, who plays Maggie Bell, read the first draft of the script and asked for a goodbye scene, because she loves Katherine so much as an actress. She basically said, 'If it makes sense story-wise, could you write in a goodbye scene for the two of us?' And I said, 'I love that.' And we wrote that scene for the two of them, and they're beautiful in it.
Maggie’s strongest bond may be with OA and Tiff’s may have been with Scola, but the two women of the team had gone through hell and back together on the team. Not only did Missy Peregrym’s push for a goodbye scene allow for an emotional moment on a pretty procedural show, but also gave some more context to Tiff’s reasoning for leaving her job.
The Season 7 premiere was FBI's first episode under Mike Weiss as a showrunner, and he penned the episode. When I noted in our interview that Peregrym’s performance in particular was a tear-jerker in the scene, Weiss responded:
Her emotions are very available to her as an actress, and we didn't make it easy on anyone in this season premiere... When you're new to a show, and you watch episodes, and you read scripts, you realize that we don't go easy on these characters or these actors. We put them in tough situations week after week. It's not saccharin, it's not sentimental. There's a world weariness and a toughness to the show and to the characters, which is a total joy to be able to write. It feels much more real and feels much more lived-in than a lot of shows. It's a weird thing – you love your characters, and so your first raw impulse is to make your characters happy. But that's not always the right creative choice.
Tiff didn’t just ride off into the sunset for a happily-ever-after after everything she'd been through, which Katherine Renee Kane really reflected in her performance as her character said her last on-screen goodbye before starting a new life in Georgia. Her final interaction with Maggie was bittersweet at best. All in all, I was very glad that FBI didn’t write Tiff out by killing her off or any other way that there’d be no coming back from, and it’d be nice to see her again someday.
Of course, Scola’s attempts to find a new partner haven’t been going well, which really adds to how I’ve been missing Tiff. National Treasure: Edge of History’s Lisette Olivera had been cast as a new series regular to work opposite John Boyd, but her exit was announced before she even debuted. For now… well, we can only wait and see if Scola does get a new partner before the end of the season.
Currently, FBI is on winter hiatus but will return to CBS on Monday, January 27 at 8 p.m. ET. As usual, new episodes will be followed by FBI: International at 9 p.m. ET and FBI: Most Wanted at 10 p.m. ET. If you want to revisit the fall finales ahead of the winter premieres in late January, you can find those episodes streaming via Paramount+.
