Hawaii Five-0 season 8: First photo of Meaghan Rath, Beulah Koale

Hawaii Five-0 season 8 premieres on CBS this fall, but you don’t have to wait that long to see first looks at Meaghan Rath and Beulah Koale. There are many promotions at hand for the upcoming batch of episodes, but these are the two newcomers who are coming aboard following the departures of Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park. We’re going to miss them, but at the same time the show must and will go on in some new and hopefully-interesting directions.

Let’s begin here with Rath, who is playing the part of Tani Rey, a lifeguard who had underwent police academy training before being kicked out. There were plans to bring this character in before there was even news on Park or Kim, and it turns out that there is a very specific reason why she works so well in this mix on the show. Speaking via Entertainment Weekly, show executive producer Peter M. Lenkov passed along the following message:

“If you think about all the people that make up the family, they’re all broken toys in some way … The opportunity to come together as a family came at the right time in their lives when they really needed it the most, and Tani is very similar to the way McGarrett collected the team in the first place. This is somebody who was kicked out of the Police Academy, somebody who clearly could be a good cop if given the opportunity, and McGarrett comes to her when really she needs it the most.”

We’re obviously interested to see how Tani fits in with the group, and also what her personality is like. Obviously she probably has a little bit of a rogue in her given her history, which probably in turn makes her a little more like Alex O’Loughlin’s character.

As for Koale and his character of Junior Reigns (pictured above), he’s a little bit more military and organized in his approach. Lenkov notes that “where McGarrett is very much of a rule-breaker, Junior’s more of a sort of by-the-book kind of guy.” However, the two men have something major in common in the form of Navy SEAL training. They’ve been through their fair share of chaos on in the field, and they may be able to bring a good bit of that training back and apply it to the job in ways that work for them. So long as they don’t get themselves arrested or wreck Hawaii in the process, it really doesn’t matter so much how they get the job done on this show. It mostly just matters that they do. You won’t see Koale right away in the new season, but he’ll turn up for the first time a number of episodes into the run.

What do you want to see for these two new additions on Hawaii Five-0 season 8? Be sure to sound off in the comments below!

Meanwhile, head over to the link here in the event that you do want to secure some additional news when it comes to the series. (Photo: CBS.)