Spoilers for the Season 1 premiere of Sheriff Country are ahead! You can stream the new series as well as its flagship show, Fire Country, with a Paramount+ subscription.
As we learned in Seasons 2 and 3 of Fire Country, the characters of its spinoff, Sheriff Country, are very connected to the Leone family. So, when this brand new series began on the 2025 TV schedule, I was wondering how exactly the two programs would cross over. Well, we didn’t have to wait long to find that out, because Max Thieriot’s character, Bode, showed up to support Mickey’s daughter, Skye, in the premiere. And the reason why they made this the first crossover scene has me very excited about what’s to come.
To recap, in a moment of need, Skye decided to call Bode, her cousin and the main character of Fire Country, to ask for his help. She told him that her boyfriend stole money from her grandpa that she couldn’t pay back. Then, while she was trying to get said money back, she stole her boyfriend’s pills, and she wanted to take them. After she gave Bode the pills and he said he’d flush them, Skye also explained that she felt “pathetic” because she didn’t have the money needed to pay Wes back. In response, her cousin gave her some money and said:
Give that to Wes. OK? And tell him that you’re good for the rest. Alright? Skye, you’re not pathetic.
She said she was glad she called Bode, and he agreed, and overall, it was a very nice moment of support. Really, no one understands what she’s going through quite like Bode does. That’s part of the reason why they decided to make this scene the big point of crossover between Fire Country and Sheriff Country in the premiere, as showrunner Matt Lopez told me during an interview for CinemaBlend:
There were several things that appealed to us. One was the idea that, you know, Max’s character, Bode, is sort of the hub of the wheel on Fire Country. But his struggles on Fire Country, with sobriety, with a criminal past, he’s been a little bit of a man on an island, right? Because Jake doesn’t have those same experiences. Manny has some of those experiences. But specifically with addiction and substance abuse, and we sort of love the idea of Bode and Skye having this in common and being able to bond over it.
As we’ve seen in previous seasons of Fire Country, Bode’s struggle with addiction as he went to Three Rock and now works at Station 42 has been consistent. While he’s been sober for a very long time, addiction is still something he very actively has to deal with. So, he gets what Skye is dealing with, and he can easily empathize with her, as Lopez pointed out.
Along with that, Bode lost his sister Riley years ago, and in some ways, Skye is kind of like a younger sibling to him. That dynamic is something Matt Lopez is very excited to explore more, and this scene was a great introduction to this pairing, as he explained:
And then throw in the fact that, as viewers of Fire Country know, the wonderfully named character, Riley from Fire Country – [Bode] had this little sister who was tragically lost. And we love this sort of idea of Skye becoming that little sister again, and being there for [Bode]. We very much see in the first episode that Max is there for Skye, but we’d love to create opportunities for Skye to actually return the favor and be there for him.
Considering the events of Fire Country’s Season 4 premiere, it’s clear that Bode is in a fragile place, and his battle with addiction is clearly continuing. So, I really hope we get to see Skye help out her cousin as well.
Overall, this scene made me very excited about what’s to come, because I feel like Bode and Skye are the perfect people to really help each other out. They both know how it feels to struggle with addiction, and that common ground is deeply valuable. So, hopefully, we’ll get to see them support each other more as both Sheriff Country and Fire Country really get their runs on CBS’s 2025-2026 lineup and episodes continue to air every Friday at 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. ET, respectively.