Fox’s Alert: Missing Persons Unit returned for its third season in the early months of 2025, but the procedural series did not get renewed for a fourth season. Created for TV by John Eisendrath and actor Jamie Foxx, the cop drama lives up to its name by following officers of the Philadelphia Police Department’s Missing Persons Unit who locate and rescue missing and kidnapped individuals. It’s particularly personal for Detective Jason Grant (Scott Caan) and Captain Nicolina “Nikki” Batista (Dania Ramirez) because their son has been missing for several years, having mysteriously disappeared.
Unlike other cop shows, which find their formula early and stick with it, Missing Persons Unit has changed quite a bit since its debut. Season 1 offered some intriguing teases concerning Nikki and Jason’s missing son, but after a heartbreaking twist, the show became a more traditional procedural in its second season. Season 3 saw the show begin to shift more toward the buddy-cop format for a procedural, leaning into its episodic structure and dropping some of its longer story arcs. The changes did not save Alert: Missing Persons Unit from cancellation.
Alert: Missing Persons Unit Season 4 Latest News
The Season Will Remain Missing
The latest Alert: Missing Persons Unit season 4 news is a sad update for fans of the three-season drama. Fox has opted to cancel the series after the season 3 finale. Per Deadline’s initial report of the cancellation, Fox had hoped to make the series work as they liked Scott Caan in the lead role, and they liked the way the series was moving with its “buddy cop evolution.” Unfortunately, the changes they considered for the show were not thought to be enough to bring in more ratings.
Alert: Missing Persons Unit was canceled alongside two other Fox scripted series, The Cleaning Lady and Accused, though the latter could be brought back as a limited-run series at a later date since it is an anthology. Interestingly, it is not the only series centered on the concept of finding missing people to be canceled during the 2024-2025 season. NBC also canceled Found before season 3. Both shows suffered drops in ratings despite having very different ways of exploring the topic.
Found was averaging about a million more viewers per episode compared to Alert: Missing Persons Unit during its second season (via TV Series Finale), but even that could not rescue it from the chopping block. This particular topic just did not seem to hit with viewers during the 2024 TV season.
Alert: Missing Persons Unit Season 4 Is Canceled
The Series Had Been On The Bubble
Network TV is jam-packed with police procedural series, and Fox as a network is no stranger to hosting its own fair share of cop dramas. Alert: Missing Persons Unit is still quite young when it comes to ongoing police shows, and that means a renewal was not a certainty like many of its contemporaries. Though reviews have been pretty poor since the debut season, the true success of a series is judged by its ratings and not its critical reception. On that score, Alert: Missing Persons Unit had been trending downward since its premiere in 2023.
Since the ratings have been on a steady decline since season 1, that puts a lot of pressure on season 3 to outperform its predecessors.
According to Programming Insider, the season 2 finale managed to draw only 1 million viewers, the lowest numbers the show had pulled to that point. With the ratings on a steady decline since season 1, that put a lot of pressure on season 3 to outperform its predecessors, but they continued to hover right around 1 million viewers throughout season 3 (via TV Series Finale), indicating the series was not drawing an audience back in.
Alert: Missing Persons Unit season 3 premiered on March 25, 2025, and concluded on May 27, 2025.
Alert: Missing Persons Unit Season 4 Cast Details
Which MPU Team Members Would Have Returned In Season 4?
The cast of Alert: Missing Persons Unit was somewhat small compared to other cop dramas, but the series managed to squeeze a lot of intrigue out of its tiny ensemble. Predicting the cast of season 4 isn’t that challenging, and the series has remained somewhat consistent since the debut season. It was all but guaranteed that Scott Caan would be back as Detective Jason Grant, and it’s his unorthodox methods that often save the day each episode. Joining him would have been Detective Sergeant Michael “Mike” Sherman, played by Ryan Broussard. The two had developed a buddy-cop dynamic throughout the first two seasons of the show.
Adding a spiritual touch to the MPU team, Adeola Role should be back as Detective Kemi Adebayo as well. Season 3 added Malcolm-Jamal Warner as interim Chief Inspector Bill Houston, but it appeared he was sticking around in the season 3 finale. Megalyn Echikunwoke also joined the team as Lt. Gabrielle Bennett, and the hot-shot officer would have likely returned as well.
Not returning for Alert: Missing Persons Unit season 4 was Dania Ramirez as Nikki Batista, Jason’s ex and Mike’s new wife. Her character was killed during season 3 during a storyline involving her connections to the mob. The role of Fivel Stewart’s Sidney was also reduced in season 3 to accommodate Stewart working on other projects, so she likely would have only been back in a guest-starring capacity as well.
Season 3 did, however, increase the story prominence of Alisha-Marie Ahamed as Wayne Pascal, a hacker on house arrest. Not only did Wayne and Jason develop a relationship, but she also officially became a consultant for MPU, so she would have been a part of season 4 moving forward.
The cast of Alert: Missing Persons Unit season 4 would have likely included:
|
Actor |
Alert: Missing Persons Unit Role |
|
|---|---|---|
|
Scott Caan |
Detective Jason Grant |
 |
|
Ryan Broussard |
Detective Sergeant Michael “Mike” Sherman |
 |
|
Adeola Role |
Detective Kemi Adebayo |
 |
|
Malcolm-Jamal Warner |
Chief Inspector Bill Houston |
 |
|
Megalyn Echikunwoke |
Lt. Gabrielle Bennett |
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|
Alisha-Marie Ahamed |
Wayne Pascal |
 |
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Alert: Missing Persons Unit Season 4 Story Details
What Will Happen When The Fox Drama Returns?
Predicting the plot of what would have been the underrated procedural‘s fourth season is somewhat difficult because there have been so many changes made to the way the show works, and the episodic nature of procedurals in general. However, there were a few clear story opportunities, including the arrival of Chief Inspector Houston, and how he would continue to work with the team, especially Jason.
The biggest cliffhanger in season 3 actually involved Wayne and provided a clear story set-up for season 4. It was revealed in the season 3 finale that Wayne was actually infiltrating MPU on behalf of someone else. Whether that was a criminal organization, a single person, or another branch of the government was not revealed. She reported her status in a message on her phone without the finale giving the viewer any more information.
Meanwhile, newcomer Lt. Gabrielle Bennett also presented some interesting narrative options, and her backstory was ripe for ongoing exploration. Her past connection to Grant added intrigue, and she may have a few skeletons in her closet. Besides all this, the real heart of the series is the missing persons cases, and the MPU would have tackled a slew of cases from week to week in Alert: Missing Persons Unit season 4.
