Ahead of its debut, S.W.A.T. Exiles scores season 2 renewal

Bit of a plot twist in TV land this week: S.W.A.T. Exiles has landed a second season before a single episode’s even had a chance to air. If you’ve ever followed renewal news, you know the usual drill—network waits, sees if viewers actually watch, then decides to cough up for more. Not so here. Five weeks ahead of the September launch on Starz, Sony’s gone and pulled the trigger early. That’s a bold move, especially since the show was made “on spec”—meaning nobody in America had bought it at the time, no guarantee for a broadcast deal, and nothing stopping it from ending up as one expensive vanity project left sitting on a shelf.

S.W.A.T. Exiles was renewed for a second season before its premiere aired anywhere.

If you’re wondering how this news broke, the answer is ‘not exactly as corporate PR would script it’. Shemar Moore—star and face of the franchise—dropped the bomb in a video, beaming into Instagram rather than letting the studio roll out the news with a boilerplate quote. Moore, as ever, couldn’t resist a bit of drama, announcing the renewal in his own, shall we say, energetic style. He told fans that filming kicks off again in just a couple of months, which tracks with Sony’s determination to keep its studios, Moore, and a crew of over 200 ticking along without pause.

The tangled business behind Exiles

Now, the Exiles project has always been a bit of a head-scratcher if you’re not tracking the deals closely. Sony owns the show entirely—that’s not standard for a lot of broadcast TV—so after wrapping filming for all ten episodes in February, they didn’t even have a US deal. Only after screening the finished pilot to execs in LA, New York, and London did Starz buy the domestic rights in June. Netflix (streaming home to the original S.W.A.T. since 2023) is still discussing ‘second-window’ rights, whatever that ends up meaning for fans’ endless app searches. Meanwhile, Sony has sold Exiles across pretty much every other territory: Europe, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Africa, and Bell Media for Canada’s CTV.

So the season 2 greenlight comes not off glitzy US ratings, but off a massive international presale sheet. That’s a bit unusual—usually US networks still hold the whip hand, but Sony’s banking on global appeal rather than waiting for the Starz premiere data to roll in.

Franchise déjà vu and cast details

You’d be forgiven for getting whiplash from the way this franchise has been handled. CBS axed the original S.W.A.T. in 2023 after six series, only to backtrack within days (viewers kicked up a fuss; not for the first time). Season seven followed, loudly dubbed the last ever... only for an eighth to be quietly ordered later, before the final curtain truly fell in March 2025. The “Return to Base” finale sent the show off after 163 episodes—but not for long, as two days later Sony announced Exiles would spin the world back up again.

• S.W.A.T. Exiles features Moore returning as Sergeant Daniel “Hondo” Harrelson Jr., yanked from retirement to lead a last-chance experimental team.
• The new squad: Ronen Rubinstein, Freddy Miyares, Zyra Gorecki, Lucy Barrett, and Adain Bradley.
• Behind the scenes, Jason Ning (Lucifer) is showrunner; Moore, Neal H. Moritz, Pavun Shetty, James Scura, and Jon Cowan are exec producers.
• Jay Harrington and Patrick St. Esprit reprise their roles (Deacon and Hicks) in the pilot, and David Lim shows up later as Victor Tan, reportedly still a bit salty about how the spin-off was unveiled.

Sony’s rapid-fire commissioning means season 2 filming starts imminently, lining it up for a possible 2027 debut. Starz may feel like a natural fit thanks to its Outlander partnership with Sony, but ink on the contract for a second season in the US is still drying—and let’s face it, the real challenge may be teaching viewers to look for this franchise anywhere except Netflix.