Why did Chris leave SWAT? Her exit landed the same month CBS cancelled the show — and then un-cancelled it
Lina Esco played Officer Christina "Chris" Alonso from the S.W.A.T. pilot in 2017 — the team's first female operator, one of the few openly bisexual leads on network television at the time, and 106 episodes' worth of the show's emotional wiring.
She left because she wanted to. No firing, no dispute, no health scare. Esco told the producers roughly a year in advance that she planned to move on, and the writers spent a full season building her an exit.
The goodbye
Her final episode aired May 22, 2022, the season 5 finale. She announced it on Instagram the same night.
"One of the most difficult decisions I've had to make," she wrote, in a statement reported by Deadline in May 2022.
She said she was leaving to pursue new creative work as an actor, writer, and director. The showrunners confirmed the year of notice in their own statement, and noted she'd made her directing debut on the show that spring.
How they wrote her out
- The setup — Chris starts volunteering at a safe house for immigrant women, run by a character called Mama Pina.
- The exit — Mama Pina is hospitalized, and Chris announces to the team she'll take over, giving two weeks' notice.
- The payoff — in the finale she spends her first night with longtime friend Jim Street (Alex Russell), then works her last shift, handing out gifts to Deacon, Luca, and the rest.
- The aftermath — the writers kept Chris and Street together offscreen in season 6, with updates delivered through Street rather than staging a breakup.
The May chaos came later
Here's where the timeline gets funny. Chris's send-off was a May finale. So was almost everything else that happened to this show.
On May 5, 2023, CBS canceled S.W.A.T. after six seasons over licensing fees. Shemar Moore posted a video the next day blasting the decision, fans piled in, and on May 8 — three days later — CBS and Sony reached a new deal and renewed it for a seventh and final season of 13 episodes.
Then on April 11, 2024, CBS reversed the "final" part too, ordering an eighth season. The third cancellation, in March 2025, stuck. Season 8 was averaging 4.9 million viewers and ranked last among the 14 dramas CBS aired that season.
Did Chris ever come back?
No. Esco hasn't returned to the role, and the series ended without her. The door was left open for years, which is arguably longer than the show itself was ever guaranteed to stay open.
For the record: S.W.A.T. was canceled three separate times and un-canceled twice. Chris Alonso walked out in 2022 and missed all of it.