The Rookie Boss Confirms We Won’t Be Seeing [Spoiler] When the Show Returns

The answer is no, but she won’t be there for the entirety of Season 7. While speaking to TVLine after the Season 6 finale, showrunner Alexi Hawley seemingly confirmed this, telling the outlet: “As you know, Jenna [Dewan]’s about to have a baby in real life, so we probably won’t see [Bailey] for the first few episodes because of that.”

It’s unclear how the show will work around her maternity leave, but her absence also means that fans will have to wait a while to get an update on the storyline set forth in the finale. During the episode, Season 6 villain Monica Stevens (Bridget Regan) helped break Season 4 villain Jason Wylver (played by Dewan’s real-life fiancé Steve Kazee) out of prison. Jason is Bailey’s abusive ex-husband, who was sentenced to eight years in prison for drug charges.

Unfortunately, it may be awhile until fans can see that action unfold. “We aren’t sure when we’ll see Jason. But yes, I think we’re looking at how we can spread stuff out so we’re not just all diving into all of it at the beginning,” Hawley said of the Bailey/Jason drama.

Elsewhere in the finale, Bailey and John began discussing adoption as a way to start their family since Bailey can’t get pregnant on her own. Hawley teased that this is something that will be explored more in Season 7 once Dewan returns.

“I think we’ll get into the real of it a bit,” he said. “I wanted to get into the fact that, when Bailey felt like a door had closed, that they hadn’t all closed. But it is a very real thing, whether you adopt domestically, where there are certain restrictions and rules. And there’s actually an ability for a parent who is giving up a child to change their mind. But I thought that this is one of those things that we could really sort of lean into.”

He continued: “I can’t really say yet where it’s all going, but I felt like even just going down the road with it and seeing how our characters interacted with it [is important].”

With Bailey and John looking to grow their family, some fans have wondered why the show didn’t just write Dewan’s real-life pregnancy into the script. Ahead of the Season 6 premiere, Hawley told TVLine that they had already written the storyline of Bailey and John exploring the idea of having children and were happy with it as is.

“We’ve had a lot of [real-life] pregnancies on the show over the years; this is going to be the first one that we don’t feature in the character. That being said, I think it’s fair to say that there will be conversations and conflict about the idea of whether they’re going to have kids, independent of Jenna literally being pregnant,” he explained.

The EP added: “This was the first time that I got an ‘I am pregnant’ phone call from an actress where I didn’t step into the writers room and go, ‘OK, this is what we’re doing this year…,’ because we already had story that we really liked that was about the conversations. So, yeah, we’re hiding it.”

The answer is no, but she won’t be there for the entirety of Season 7. While speaking to TVLine after the Season 6 finale, showrunner Alexi Hawley seemingly confirmed this, telling the outlet: “As you know, Jenna [Dewan]’s about to have a baby in real life, so we probably won’t see [Bailey] for the first few episodes…