Bosch Is Finally Ready For Titus Welliver's Exit

Image courtesy of MovieStillsDb Published Oct 1, 2026, 7:15 PM EDT Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020. Sign in to your ScreenRant account While the Bosch franchise has relied heavily on series star Titus Welliver since the Prime Video detective drama began, its upcoming spinoff will change this routine. It is pretty tough to imagine HBO’s action thriller Reacher without Alan Ritchson’s portrayal of the title character. The same is true of the streaming service’s James Patterson adaptation Cross, where Aldis Hodge’s portrayal of the eponymous antihero is central to the show’s appeal. However, the classic network TV procedural series Law & Order: SVU continued for years after Stabler’s exit, even though Christopher Meloni’s hot-headed cop was as much the show’s main character as Mariska Hargitay’s Olivia Benson. Similarly, the NCIS franchise survived Mark Harmon’s exit, Criminal Minds survived the departure of not one, but two lead actors in the form of Mandy Patinkin and Thomas Gibson, and even ABC’s The Rookie expanded its focus from Nathan Fillion’s title character to the rest of his squad across its eight seasons. Broadly speaking, traditional police procedural franchises on network TV, like the Law & Order, FBI, 9-1-1, Criminal Minds, NCIS, and CSI franchises, tend to center on ensemble teams. In contrast, streaming thriller shows such as Cross, Reacher, and Prime Video’s divisive Patricia Cornwell adaptation Scarpetta, disproportionately center on individual protagonists. They may have colleagues and superiors, but these characters are ultimately the show’s true focus. This has never been more true than in Prime Video’s Titus Welliver vehicle Bosch, and it is the main reason that the upcoming prequel Bosch: Start of Watch could prove a hard sell. Bosch: Start of Watch Is The First Bosch Series That Doesn’t Need Titus Welliver Although Bosch is based on a novel series of the same name by The Lincoln Lawyer creator Michael Connelly, viewers should not go into the Prime Video action thriller expecting something as fun and sunny as Netflix’s The Lincoln Lawyer series. Bosch is a considerably darker affair, an R-rated detective show that takes the brooding introspection of True Detective and melds it with the gritty urban crime drama of The Wire and The Shield. In this regard, Bosch is a lot like Southland, although the show has one big difference from that other, earlier LA-set cop series. As the title implies, Bosch is focused on Welliver’s titular homicide detective, a taciturn cop who might be brilliant when it comes to catching killers, but who has a hard time playing well with others. A lone wolf renegade, Welliver’s Bosch is the show’s main focus and the franchise’s lynchpin. Although Bosch is somehow even more prickly and averse to human contact in the source novels, the cop at the center of Prime Video’s show is no team player either. Welliver’s Bosch has troubled, tense relationships with his superiors, his fellow cops, and even his loved ones, and this means that Bosch falls squarely into the aforementioned category of streaming police procedural shows that focus on an individual antihero, not an entire squad of law enforcement officers. This clearly didn’t hurt the reception of the original series, which lasted an impressive seven seasons and 68 episodes between 2014 and 2021. After seven seasons of Bosch, Welliver almost immediately returned to the role for a further three seasons of the sequel series Bosch: Legacy, before he then also appeared in season 1 of Ballard, a spinoff that focuses on Maggie Q’s titular detective who specializes in cold cases. The Bosch Franchise Moving On From Titus Welliver’s Bosch Is Good News Tyler Golden / ©Amazon/ Courtesy Everett Collection Ironically, since Welliver got his start on the ensemble police procedural NYPD Blue, the Bosch franchise has always relied on its original star over its supporting actors. This has never been a problem for the series, and Welliver’s presence in numerous episodes of Ballard granted the spinoff a sense of legitimacy that it might have lacked without an appearance from the franchise’s original main character. This approach was so successful that Reacher’s first spinoff, Neagley, borrowed the same trick, bringing back Ritchson’s Reacher for numerous appearances in season 1, and earned similarly positive reviews from critics and fans. However, Welliver’s ubiquitous presence in the franchise was always bound to end eventually, and the upcoming MGM+ prequel series Bosch: Start of Watch will officially be the first outing of the series without him in the cast list. Make no mistake, Welliver remains booked and busy in the world of procedurals, starring in the period crime drama The Westies as well as playing guest roles in Dark Winds and the final season of Netflix’s spy series The Night Agent. However, his choice to eschew a role in Bosch: Start of Watch is the right one, regardless of his availability. After 12 years, it was time to retire this version of the character. Another Franchise’s Spinoff Proves Bosch’s Prequel Start of Watch Is Making The Right Move Gotham’s breakout star Cameron Monaghan will play the younger version of Bosch in the prequel after impressing audiences as Ian Gallagher in Shameless and Gotham’s memorably unhinged version of the classic Batman villain The Joker. Welliver’s absence gives Monaghan time to make the character his own, while the show’s decision to avoid superfluous narration from Welliver’s older version of Bocsh sidesteps a mistake made by another gritty, R-rated crime thriller prequel. Dexter: Original Sin had Michael C. Hall as its narrator, and that prequel only lasted one season, thanks in part to the reboot Dexter: Resurrection overshadowing the series. It was almost inevitable that a follow-up show bringing back Hall’s Dexter would outshine a prequel that established a new, younger version of the character, but the franchise made matters worse for itself by bringing in the original show’s star as the prequel’s narrator. This inevitably resulted in unfavorable comparisons between Dexter: Original Sin and Dexter, instead of giving the prequel time to establish itself as a unique series in its own right. Thus, to ensure that the Bosch franchise doesn’t repeat Dexter’s mistakes, its upcoming prequel is right to drop the tired trope of an older protagonist offering redundant narration. This approach may be welcome in sitcoms like Young Sheldon, but gritty crime dramas like Bosch: Start of Watch need to establish a sense of urgency and immediacy that can be undone by nostalgic narration. Dexter: Original Sin’s narration certainly sapped the spinoff of its tension, so Bosch: Start of Watch is right to make a clean break from the Bosch franchise by moving on without Welliver’s involvement. Release Date 2015 - 2021-00-00 Network Prime Video Showrunner Eric Ellis Overmyer Directors Alex Zakrzewski, Ernest R. Dickerson, Patrick Cady, Aaron Lipstadt, Adam Davidson, Daisy von Scherler Mayer, Kevin Dowling, Neema Barnette, Tim Hunter, Zetna Fuentes, Christine Moore, Jim McKay, Laura Belsey, Matt Earl Beesley, Phil Abraham, Roxann Dawson, Sarah Pia Anderson, Stephen Gyllenhaal, Tara Nicole Weyr, Thomas Carter, Hagar Ben-Asher Writers Jeffrey Alan Fiskin, Tom Bernardo, Elle Johnson, John Mankiewicz, Shaz Bennett, Alex Meenehan, Katie Pyne, Osokwe Vasquez, Lolis Eric Elie, Jessica Kivnik, Mitzi Roberts Creator(s) Eric Ellis Overmyer