Eric Winter and Nathan Fillion, The Rookie
ABC
[Warning: This story contains spoilers for The Rookie’s Season 8 finale, “The Bandit.” Read at your own risk!]
“Chenford” fans, be careful what you wish for on The Rookie.
After nearly a decade of playing out one of the most beloved slow-burn romances on television, LAPD sergeants Lucy Chen (Melissa O’Neil) and Tim Bradford (Eric Winter) finally got engaged at the end of Season 8 — only for their celebrations to be cut short by henchmen of Heath Everett (Jeffrey Vincent Parise), the international crime boss who ominously told Tim earlier this season that he would regret turning down a bribe from him.
In Monday’s finale, the LAPD and FBI dedicated a significant amount of resources to escort Everett — who had previously orchestrated a major prison break by bribing a U.S. Marshal before being apprehended by Tim — to the courthouse. Despite seemingly preparing for every possible contingency, the authorities were left woefully flat-footed when a pickup truck cut in front of them on a bridge and dropped a bunch of nails on the road to hold up traffic. A heavily armed helicopter then appeared from below the bridge and, using a huge magnet, airlifted Everett’s transport car directly off the road to a secret location.
Using pieces of a drone left at the crime scene, the LAPD and FBI were able to deduce that the drone was launched from the port of Los Angeles and was connected to an international maritime company. One of the three ships operated by that company was a decommissioned military transport ship that was departing imminently from the port of San Diego with Everett and at least three dozen private soldiers on board. Conducting a late-night stealth mission, a small team of LAPD and FBI representatives successfully infiltrated the ship, shut off the engine, and recaptured Everett.
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The next day, Tim asked Lucy to take a walk on the nearby beach, where he finally decided to pop the question. “When we met, I had to come to believe that the world was a really dark place. And for the last eight years, you’ve shown me just how much light there really is,” he said. “You have healed me in places I didn’t even know were broken. And I promise you — I promise to spend the rest of our lives doing everything I can to be worthy of that love. So, Lucy Chen, will you marry me?” (Lucy obviously said yes.)
“It felt really important to have this incredibly special moment that honestly the audience has been wanting for a long time, obviously,” creator and showrunner Alexi Hawley told TV Guide. But, of course, The Rookie has always had a habit of pulling the rug out from under the characters — and by extension, the viewers. Just seconds after Lucy put the ring on her finger, a couple approached to congratulate them and then injected them with a sedative. Before the screen cut to black, Lucy and Tim snuck one last hazy look at each other before bags were put over their heads.
As he prepares to reopen the writers’ room for Season 9 later this spring, Hawley answers all of our burning questions below about writing Tim’s proposal to Lucy (and the idea that he chose to leave on the cutting room floor), the challenges of reinventing the longest-running show he has ever been a part of, and how protagonist John Nolan’s (Nathan Fillion) speech hints at the potential Rookie: North spin-off.
Eric Winter and Melissa O’Neil, The Rookie
ABC
At what point this season did you decide Tim and Lucy’s engagement should happen in the finale, and was it always going to be intertwined with the Everett plot?
Alexi Hawley: From fairly early on. It felt like the season was long enough that I wanted to do all those fun relationship things. [There was] the fun of having them moving in together and the machinations of that, like her being slow to unpack. I didn’t want to jump right to an engagement. Otherwise, we should have just done that right from the beginning. But it felt like we had enough runway to really earn it by the end of the season. And then the Everett connection happened around when we introduced Everett, honestly. That sense of where [the storyline] would go and setting up the bribe and [him telling Tim] “You’re not going to like saying no to me” — that was around Episode 8 where that came in.
Tim certainly went to great lengths to find this ring, but who on your team picked out Lucy’s engagement ring? Did you pick the ring?
Hawley: I picked out the ring with our production designer and Brynn [Malone, who co-wrote the penultimate episode]. It was a little bit of a group effort to find the right one. It’s why we lean into the storytelling a bit [about who previously owned that ring]. It’s easy to go big and gaudy, but that isn’t really Tim’s style nor his economic bracket. So just to find the ring that seemed like the most Lucy and the fact that it had a backstory — all that stuff was part of the fun of the journey. It wasn’t just about picking something pretty. It was their story to tell there.
Tim delivers a couple of really heartfelt monologues in the last two episodes — first to the jeweler about what Lucy has meant to him, and then to Lucy during the proposal. How did you want to encapsulate their relationship in his speeches?
Hawley: When we first met Tim Bradford back in the pilot, he was a very damaged guy who presented as an asshole, basically. He was the drill sergeant. And then you see his wife come out of that convenience store. You realize that he hasn’t seen her in a year, and she’s a drug addict. There’s this whole life that the audience didn’t know about that is going on that doesn’t necessarily excuse his actions, but does explain them. So part of his journey, especially in the last few seasons, has been coming to terms with the parts of him that were broken, and Lucy ultimately is the person who helped put him back together and loved him.
The episodes to me that were super powerful after he broke up with her were the ones where she was generous with him, despite the fact that he broke her heart. She could put that aside and still care about what happened to him, even though he broke her heart. So I think that journey for him is probably the biggest one, and that’s what we wanted to capture: How would Tim talk about the love story? And the awkwardness of him revealing himself to the jeweler. I just love that we’re all in love with people who are uniquely broken or uniquely right for us.
Just after Tim and Lucy were injected with a sedative and right before they had bags put over their heads, they briefly touch hands as if to reassure each other. Was that final touch scripted?
Hawley: I don’t think the touch was scripted. I think that was found on the day with Bill Rowe, who directed it, and Melissa and Eric. I can’t fully remember, but I think they found that moment. And yeah, the whiplash of that moment is what we do as a show. [Laughs.] “Here’s something really, really nice — and psych! Now we’re doing something mean to you.” It’s not like I didn’t think about [a different ending]. We could have ended the season with just a happy ending, and people would still have come back and it would’ve been satisfying, but where’s the drama in that, really?
It felt really important to have this incredibly special moment that honestly the audience has been wanting for a long time, obviously. I remember watching the director’s cut when Bill turned it in and I got emotional about it, which caught me a little bit by surprise. Not that I’m not emotionally invested in their journey, but [I was struck by] the primalness of that moment and not even realizing how much we’d all been leaning in on it. But yeah, in that moment, they’re each looking to protect each other. They’re each looking to connect with each other, not knowing what’s going to happen next.
The first person who will immediately suspect that something is up will be Angela (Alyssa Diaz), because she hand-delivered Lucy’s missing engagement ring to Tim on the morning of the proposal, but the rest of the station was also aware that Tim was getting ready to propose. Will the season premiere pick up in the immediate aftermath of the kidnapping?
Hawley: I don’t know a lot yet. I have some thoughts. The writers’ room hasn’t started yet, obviously, but I don’t think it’ll be immediate, immediate. We have a tendency to jump into storytelling rather than setting it up for the long story. So, no, I would assume that we’ll be on the trail of trying to find out where they are and wherever Everett’s taking them and all that kind of stuff. I reserve the right to change my mind, but in my head right now, that’s where I am.
What’s interesting is, there was an “Oh sh**” conversation in the writers’ room when we were breaking this moment. We were never going to do it, but what if they brought [Lucy and Tim’s dog] Kojo with them to the beach? How heartbreaking would that be to have Kojo left behind? So I’m not that mean! That was a bridge too far for me, but it was a conversation that happened.
Where exactly did the idea for this finale storyline — with the flyaway police cruiser and the multi-level ship — come from, and what were some of the biggest challenges of trying to pull that episode off on a network TV schedule?
Hawley: We have such a great crew from top to bottom, so we do accomplish more, I think, than a lot of shows. That was a nine-day episode, just like a lot of them. We didn’t add extra time to that one. Honestly, the set piece came a little bit from my memory of that bridge, because we shot that bridge back in Season 1 or 2. I remember just how cinematic it was. And we were thinking about, “Well, if we [as police officers] were prepared for everything, what could be unexpected?” And then the magnet — and the helicopter — came out of that conversation. I thought the bridge would be someplace to shoot something that would be cool if we could get it, and we did manage to shut it down for two days, which was great, to shoot that stuff.
The big ship was a great find by our locations people. It was a little complicated to ultimately get it, because it’s this civilian military hybrid ship that was built in the ’70s. I think it takes five days to start the steam engines on that boat, but the Department of Transportation is its overseer, not the military. So there was just a lot of back and forth. We didn’t actually get full permission on it until almost before we started shooting it, but it was a great location. It really shot well.
It looked amazing at night. I don’t think you guys had ever been on a ship before in eight seasons, so kudos to your team for still being able to find new, surprising places to explore.
Hawley: That’s a lot of what we do. Literally now, I’m trying to think of what to go to locations [managers] with for Season 9. “Hey, we’ve never shot at the Hollywood Bowl. Can we get in there? We’ve never shot it. The show really is a love letter to L.A., and so what else haven’t we shown yet?” It gets harder the longer we go, but that’s a challenge I’ll take.
Deric Augustine and Lisseth Chavez, The Rookie
Disney/Mike Taing
Miles (Deric Augustine) goes through a lot back at the precinct — he is taken out of the field and forced to do processing work, but then someone in jail fires a gun under his supervision. He second-guesses his own competency as a police officer, but Harper (Mekia Cox) ultimately clears him of any wrongdoing. What did you want to accomplish by putting Miles through his paces as a rookie this season, and how will those lessons carry over into his inevitable promotion in Season 9?
Hawley: The Miles character has been really interesting to develop. Derek is a great actor, and he’s really fun to write for. It was interesting to play around with maturity and the cowboy nature versus confidence a little bit. Our thought this season was about: How much of it is performative, and how much of it is grounded in his confidence? So we definitely wanted to get into that and the assumptions that he makes [on the job], which, again, come from a little bit of immaturity and this need to jump first and ask questions later. That’s just something he needs to learn as he’s going.
We needed something really dynamic for the finale — partly to balance the storytelling, so that it had weight. But we wanted to put him in this position where, as with a lot of policing, something shocking can come out of nowhere. He thinks he’s just doing processing work all day. It’s not going to be that exciting. And then suddenly he’s thrown in, and in the heat of the moment, he’s like, “I know I searched [the gunman], didn’t I?” And all those questions and the self-doubts. It felt like it was good territory to explore with him. He’s definitely matured a lot over the course of the seasons we’ve had with him, and I’m looking forward to next season.
Do you think you will introduce new rookies early next season?
Hawley: Yeah, I think we have to. That’s part of the show, obviously, so that’s another conversation because I also don’t like to repeat ourselves. We’ve had a lot of rookies — successful and not — going back to the Badger days [in Season 3] where Greg Grunberg shot his gun in roll call. [In that case] you’re a rookie for not even five minutes, and then you’re out. [Laughs.] So the big conversation when the writers’ room starts is really going to be, “OK, how do we do this in a way we haven’t done before?” As we’ve talked about before, a new rookie is there to serve not only as themselves as a character, but also their training officer. So what do we need? What do we need to do with Nolan next season that a new rookie personality could help us achieve?
From a storytelling perspective, Wesley (Shawn Ashmore) returning to his roots as a defense attorney — after previously working and running for DA — makes a lot of dramatic sense. How do you think he is approaching that job differently now than he did the first time around?
Hawley: Having been part of team police and prosecutor, he can’t have helped but have gotten some empathy for that side that he didn’t necessarily have before. When we first met him, when Angela first met him, he was very, very strident about rights and defense, which he should be as a defense attorney, but he really only saw one side of the story. And now that he has been a prosecutor — even though he knows that the system is flawed and he joined the DA’s office to try and fix it from within, only to realize that he didn’t have enough power to do that — I think the struggle next season, which we tipped off in the finale with his conversation with Tim, is, “OK, now you’re on the other side, you can’t just show up. You got to get a badge like everybody else.” All that stuff is going to pit him a little bit against them.
And, also, how’s Wesley going to deal with another Elijah-type character? We had fun with the Troy Garrity character as [his and Michael Trucco‘s Sean’s] first case [as defense attorneys], but there will be other cases that come like Everett that are much more complicated, and it’s about the spirit of the law versus the letter of the law.
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During their ride along earlier in the episode, Tim tells Grey (Richard T. Jones) that he just assumed Grey would be taking back his old job as watch commander after the end of the joint LAPD-FBI task force, but Grey admits that even he doesn’t know what his plans will be going forward. Have you and Richard discussed his future on the show? Do you think there will come a time when Grey will end up leaving the force or retiring?
Hawley: I can feel Richard leaning forward to listen to my answer, wherever he is. [Laughs.] Look, Lieutenant Grey is a huge part of our show. I think that, again, part of our conversations at the top of Season 9 is: Because I want every season to be its own thing and I want it to keep it fresh, how do we not go backwards? I think the Monica task force was a really great storyline for Richard and for Felix [Solis, who plays Garza and was previously on the short-lived The Rookie: Feds spinoff]. It’s a joy that we get to see him as much as we do, and he and Richard are so good together. So, yeah, [we’re] trying to figure out exactly what Lieutenant Grey next season looks like for us. I have some thoughts on it, but it’s not firm in my head yet.
Is that task force done now that Monica (Bridget Regan) is dead?
Hawley: I think for all intents and purposes, it’s done. There’s probably some wrapping it up, but it really was designed around her and The Blacklist of it all, which was our homage to that show. So I think now with Monica dead, that’s behind us.
Can you walk me through your decision to kill off Monica in the penultimate episode? Why did she have to die at this point in the show’s run?
Hawley: It felt like it was time. As a character, she always tries to get away with stuff. So it felt like she would never be happy, as she says in the show, about working in a Cinnabon in a flyover state. That’s just not who she is. I think she knew deep down that her [final] play [to escape L.A. unscathed] was not going to work. She knew how desperate it was and how fast she was moving. So I think that when she got in that car to go to the airport, she didn’t know that that is where she was going to die, but I think that she thought that odds were it was going to be an unhappy ending. But she still had some hope.
I called Bridget to have that conversation before, because you have to do that. I did tell her I’d give her a Viking death, because I feel like Monica earned that. What I loved and what we’d even talked about going into the premiere in Prague — at which point I didn’t necessarily know that this would be the end of her journey this season — but I did like the idea that, again, she’s not a one-dimensional character. And that [goodbye] scene with Wesley, they’re so good. That scene is so heartbreaking — she understands all the choices she made, and yet she still doesn’t know how she got here, and she understands that, ultimately, she is a fatally flawed character. So, yeah, it just felt like the right time.
Do you think Wesley has told Angela off-camera about his final conversation with Monica, or will he just keep that secret to himself forever?
Hawley: No, I think he told her about it. I don’t think he keeps secrets like that from Angela. What I liked about the episode where Lopez had to go to Monica to ask her to put that statement out when Elijah came out of the woodwork was that she never for a moment suspected that [Wesley] cheated on her with Monica. I think there is a trust in that relationship that is super grounded, and because of that trust, it gives him the comfort of knowing that he can tell her what happened without [the relationship imploding]. Lopez thinks that he’s a softie at heart and she loves him for it, despite the fact that she’s not a softie in the same way. She doesn’t look at him and that relationship with Monica and think that he has feelings for her, other than just they have history and Wesley cares for her no matter what she’s become.
Lastly, Nolan’s speech to Dash — played by your own son, Beckett — toward the end of the finale about reinvention feels very much like a summation of Nolan’s takeaways from the last eight seasons as well as a nod to the potential The Rookie: North spinoff that you are hoping to launch next season. Was that intentional?
Hawley: It was intentional. It’s interesting — that was a network note. When we turned in the first draft or the studio/network draft of the finale, there was a sense that it felt like it needed a little bit of a summation, like you just said, from Nolan, which I really appreciate. That was a really good note. I felt like it was time to be self-aware in that moment of the ethos of our show, which is that reinvention is always possible and [there are] second chances. [I wanted] to couch it in a way where you have Dash who’s 18 and looking at a different place in the world, but Nolan comes in and says, “18’s the time to go out and try, but you can always reinvent.” So, anyway, that was what it came out of. I thought it ended up being a really powerful moment in the show.
All eight seasons of The Rookie are now streaming on Hulu.