Sheriff Country will skip a 2024 premiere: What to know about the Fire Country spin-off

Fire Country fam, it's official! We will be getting Sheriff Country, the Morena Baccarin-led spin-off in the 2024-2025 television season. After the stunner that was "Alert the Sheriff," which introduced us to Baccarin's Mickey Fox, a Sheriff's Sergeant on the Edgewater police force, it's no surprise the series got the greenlight.

To briefly recap what happened (full recap here!), we learned that Mickey's connection to the Leones lies with Sharon. The two are sisters by marriage who decided to retained their familial bond after their parents divorced. However, they've been estranged for years because Mickey arrested Bode. Sharon, being his mother, and at the time unable to reconcile Bode's self-destructive behavior and addiction with the consequences it would have on his life, stopped speaking to Mickey.

Despite this, Mickey did reach out when her own child, Skye, landed in rehab for substance abuse. She admitted that she had been judgmental about Sharon's parenting style and that raising her daughter to not be like Bode, and to be "perfect," didn't keep her away from drugs. Hashing out the past and talking through their issues helped the sisters come to an understanding and they are on their way to repairing their relationship.

That was the emotional crux of "Alert the Sheriff" but the case of the week will play into the plot of the spin-off as Sheriff Fred Watkins, the man who Mickey looked up to as a father figure, was shot and killed. It was assumed that Rudy Varda, the Three Rock inmate who escaped, was responsible but it was actually Lieutenant Kubiak who murdered him. Mickey was able to bring her colleague to justice but the situation does mean that the office needs to be filled. That's where Mickey comes in!

What is Sheriff Country about?

The official synopsis for the series is as follows:

"SHERIFF COUNTRY stars Morena Baccarin as straight-shooting sheriff Mickey Fox, the stepsister of Cal Fire’s division chief Sharon Leone (Diane Farr of FIRE COUNTRY), who investigates criminal activity as she patrols the streets of small-town Edgewater while contending with her ex-con father and a mysterious incident involving her wayward daughter. SHERIFF COUNTRY is an expansion of the universe of the hit drama series FIRE COUNTRY."

Mickey's "ex-con father" has a completely different personality from herself. Though we didn't get to meet him in "Alert the Sheriff," we did learn that he'd been a drug dealer. In fact, the marriage between her and Sharon's parents fell apart after their house was raided by the FBI. The sisters were teenagers at the time and had no idea what he'd been up to.

The life changing event led to Mickey being determined to live on the straight and narrow. However, it also made her empathetic to people who have made poor decisions that have landed them in police custody as well as their families. The father-daughter duo still maintain a relationship but he's the kind of person who'd give his granddaughter an unreasonable amount of scratch-offs as a graduation present. It's an impracticable gift and one Mickey takes advantage of when she's stressed and needs to think.

But, while Mickey considers the reasons behind the criminal actions someone takes, she cannot stand officers who betray the badge like Kubiak did. She takes her duty to serve and protect very seriously.

To describe Sheriff Country, according to Jordan Calloway, Fire Country director Bill Purple said this: "Oh, this is Fire Country, Sheriff Country though is like Fire Country but with guns."

We certainly saw that in "Alert the Sheriff" as the world completely opened up. We first meet Mickey in a helicopter as she and Kubiak are going after a drug dealer who's fleeing the scene in a copter himself. She knows him because he's married to a woman she went to high school with. Mickey uses that connection to her advantage and calls him so he'll ground the plane, which he does but not before tossing a duffel of money out of the helicopter.

The episode also gives us a look at the police department and some roads and woods we'd yet to encounter on Fire Country. We'll be seeing more of the residential area of Edgewater with this series as Mickey will be dealing directly with the town's citizens in a way that the firefighters do not.

Sheriff Country is expected to premiere during the 2025-2026 TV season for CBS, so we won't be seeing the series join its parent show just yet. We'll keep you posted as more news comes in. Stay tuned to Hidden Remote!