19 Years Ago, Walton Goggins Starred in a Forgotten Spin-Off of His All-Time Great Cop Thriller Series

September 9, 2026 - 02:21

Nineteen years ago, Walton Goggins was already a familiar face to fans of gritty television, but he had not yet become the household name he is today. Long before his acclaimed turns in shows like Vice Principals, The Righteous Gemstones, and Fallout, Goggins was anchoring one of the most intense cop dramas ever put on the small screen. That show was The Shield, a raw, morally messy look at corrupt LAPD officers. And in 2006, FX tried to spin that world off into something new, but the result was a short-lived series that most viewers have completely erased from memory.

The spin-off was called The Unit, and it was not actually a direct sequel to The Shield. Instead, it followed a covert special forces team, with Goggins playing a new character entirely. The confusion comes from the fact that The Unit was created by David Mamet and based on a real military book, but it shared a gritty, handheld-camera energy with The Shield. Goggins brought the same nervous intensity he had used to play the volatile Detective Shane Vendrell, which made fans of the original show tune in expecting more of the same. What they got was a different beast, a procedural about soldiers balancing secret missions with suburban family life.

The Unit ran for four seasons, which is hardly a failure, but it never earned the critical worship that The Shield still enjoys today. Goggins himself has said in interviews that he took the role because he wanted to keep working with The Shield creator Shawn Ryan, who was also an executive producer on The Unit. But the show never found a defining voice. It was too polished to feel dangerous and too episodic to build the kind of slow-burn dread that made The Shield so gripping. By the time it ended in 2009, most people had already moved on.

Now, with Goggins enjoying a career renaissance, it is strange to look back at that period. He was playing two very different lawmen at the same time, one crooked and one honorable, and only one of those performances got remembered. The Unit is not a bad show, but it is a forgotten footnote in a career full of unforgettable characters. If you ever wondered where Goggins went right after The Shield wrapped, the answer is that he went to a place that tried to bottle the same lightning, but the bottle just did not hold.