Rick Castle's eccentric mother Martha is not going anywhere.
She might have found a new apartment and moved out of Rick and Kate Beckett's place, but that does not mean that her scenes will be lessened when "Castle" season 8 returns.
Co-showrunner Terence Paul Winter confirmed this with TV Line by saying, "She's very much a part of Castle's life. Don't think that just because she now has her own place and is doing well on Broadway that we're not going to see her sharing her wisdom with her favorite and only son."
However, the same statement cannot be said of Castle's father. "Would you settle for "He is mentioned in the premiere?" Winter said.
For the past seven seasons, "Castle" has taken audiences from one shocking twist after another, and the showrunners have decided to shake things up even further by promoting Stana Katic's character Beckett into Captain and adding new characters such as Toks Olagundoye's Hayley Shipton and Sunkrish Bala's Vikram Singh.
"At the end of the day, we came into this season wanting to shake things up," new co-showrunner Alexi Hawley said. "The show has been doing a great job with what's it's been doing, but now we've been given an opportunity to really sort of add some energy into it."
But Beckett's promotion is not even half of the shake-up. Winter added that having Beckett run for office is "something we absolutely considered, and it's not like it's off the table."
"What we realized is that the best way to tell Castle's stories is to have Castle investigating twisty, fun cases. And the best way to do that is to keep Beckett in the precinct," he said.
With Beckett as Captain, however, that would mean that she would spend less time with Castle solving cases. She would also be experiencing a new dynamic with her colleagues and good friends Ryan, Esposito, and Lanie.
Also, fans felt threatened for a while that Hayley will disrupt Castle and Beckett's happy union, but the showrunners have assured fans that this would not happen.
"The important thing to say about Rick and Kate is that the show has always been and will always be about their love affair," Hawley said. "But we're looking to add some drama to it, some spark to it. We're going to have fun. It's going to be emotional at times, it will be romantic. It will be everything."
