SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not viewed Friday’s episode.
Original S.W.A.T. cast member Kenny Johnson bid farewell to the team on Friday.
The promos for the CBS show seemed to indicate that his character, Officer Dominique Luca, was killed in the line of duty. That tease had fans buzzing about the death of a beloved character.
Johnson, an original series regular cast member, became a recurring heading into the drama’s current seventh and final season.
Worry not, fans. Although Luca sustained multiple gunshot wounds, he did survive the onslaught.
The bad news: a doctor’s phone call several weeks later said he had irreversible nerve damage from a wound to his shoulder. That meant he couldn’t pass the physical for duty.
Desk duty was an option, but the Luca opts for retirement, and is given a ceremony attended by all outside of HQ.
He gave his reaction to the final farewell to TVLine.
“Oh God, man… Whew… [Chokes up] Just looking out at, like, Jay [Harrington] and Tan (played by David Lim), and Anna [Enger Ritch] and Odie (Otis Gallop as Sgt. Stevens)…. The look that they had, because they know what this means…. We’ve all been so close to each other for all this time, so every single time I eyed them it was tough because it’s Luca leaving, but for me I’m losing these friends that I’ve bonded with for six years, every single day. There’s a parallel there, obviously, but you know when it’s a human experience and it’s very real, I could see that there was a struggle in there for those guys, and it hurt me. It was a goodbye, but an “I love you” to everybody. It was wild, yeah.”