‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ Gives the Squad One Final Heist in ‘The Last Day, Part I and II’ (RECAP)
Spoiler Alert
[WARNING: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Brooklyn Nine-Nine‘s series finale, “The Last Day, Part I and II.”]
Plenty of Brooklyn Nine-Nine fans were bummed when they found out there wouldn’t be another Halloween Heist episode in the show’s final season. But in “The Last Day, Part I and II,” those frowns should turn upside down. There is, indeed, one final heist—it’s just not tied to a specific holiday! And it’s filled with all the hallmarks of those iconic episodes: betrayals, twists, and even a few tearjerker moments. Here’s how it happens.
To start, Jake (Andy Samberg) throws one final, “non-holiday-associated” heist to celebrate Holt’s (Andre Braugher) last day. Terry (Terry Crews) says he can’t vie for the crown because of his captain interview, so he’s out (really, truly — no tricks this time). They pick partners, and Holt ends up with Hitchcock (Dirk Blocker), who appears as usual via an iPad from Brazil, and Scully (Joel McKinnon Miller). Amy (Melissa Fumero), with Rosa (Stephanie Beatriz); and Jake, with Boyle (Joe Lo Truglio). They compete for a medal that says “grand champion,” modeled after Holt’s medal of valor. Whoever has the medal at midnight wins. They put the medal in a tube, and that seems to be that.
John P. Fleenor/NBC
But there’s a trio of twists—first, Jake and Amy have planned the whole thing, because they’re secretly working together. For the second—Jake’s leaving the Nine-Nine. He reminds Amy that he was scared to have kids because he didn’t want to be like his absent father, so he wants to stick around and be there for Mac while Amy continues her job. “You’ve earned this incredible opportunity, and you can’t do it halfway,” he tells his wife. “It’s too important.”
The third twist is that the heist is actually going to be “The Final Goodbye” — it’s a trip down memory lane which winds up with whole squad at the Brooklyn Bridge. In order for it to work, he or Amy have to win the first leg, so they need to get the tube first. The initial part of the heist is a scavenger hunt dedicated to the past eight years of the squad; through a series of clues they’re led to the vending machine, Jake’s cannibal cellmate, Wuntsch’s grave, the room where Jake made the perps sing “I Want It That Way,” and, lastly, the place where Holt and Kevin reconciled and kissed.
They all run out to the street, but someone’s already taken the tube: It’s Gina! (And wearing a sweatshirt that says “Surprise Reveal,” no less.) Under the impression the heist is real, she puts the medal in an armored truck and drives away.
NBC
The squad now has to figure out how to break into an armored truck. Jake, with a magnet vest, eventually succeeds; but Holt gets the keys to the truck by blackmailing Gina, telling her to hand them over since her social media accounts have been hacked by Hitchcock and Scully. From there, he gets the medal from Jake and activates the magnets on his vest (because of course, this is the heist and he sold the Jake the vest while in disguise). But all hope is not lost! Holt gave the medal to Cheddar, and Amy has a plan to get it back. Except… Rosa betrays her and rides off with Pimento (Jason Mantzoukas) to get the medal for herself.
There’s a fourth and final twist. The whole episode, the teams have been going after dummy tubes that contain sentimental gifts for the squad, and Amy and Jake have been in control the whole time. But — Charles found out Jake’s planning to leave the Nine-Nine, and he storms away, betrayed and heartbroken.
From there, everyone chases their dreams. Gina takes Rosa to the airport to get Pimento before he leaves, since Rosa says she “always thought they’d end up together.” Jake goes after Boyle to the place he first said they were best friends, and he gives him his gift (a magazine that declares them “fancy best friends”). He later gives Amy her gift, too, a necklace with a binder on it with tabs for their whole family. But after that, he cuts her out of the heist—he wants to set off fireworks, and she wouldn’t let him. And that’s where things go horribly wrong. Jake mistakenly sets off the fireworks while he and Boyle are still standing next to them. He wakes up in a hospital with Amy standing over him, relieved he’s awake. He’s adamant he needs to get back to the heist. Then, the bombshell drops: “Jake, you’ve been in a coma for seven years.” Except… it’s not true. Amy planned the whole thing—she knocked him and Boyle out and set up the hospital set—and she cuffs Jake to the hospital bed.
Amy has a second plan: She’s throwing Jake a perfect goodbye party, and her betrayal of him keeps the party a secret. Jake breaks free of the cuffs, and he hunts Amy down to get the tube from her, but she doesn’t have it: Someone else has taken it. They, and the remaining rest of the squad, track it (because of course it has a tracker) to Brooklyn Storage Solutions, the place where they worked their first case with Captain Holt. If that sounds suspicious, it is: Holt has planned the whole thing.
John P. Fleenor/NBC)
If you’re wondering what Holt has been up to this whole time, he was helping Terry, who at first thought his captain interview was fake and part of the heist, so he insulted his interviewer and stormed out. Then he returned to the precinct to vent, only to have Holt tell him that was the real interview. And he might have just utterly blown it. He and Holt rush back, and Holt gives a moving speech about Terry… only for the interviewer to rip off his wig (it’s Patrick Stewart!) and lock them in the room. It was really all part of the heist! He gets Terry to reveal the location of the tube, because he knows it, because he thought he wasn’t part of heist and Jake believed him. From there, Holt got the real tube.
“The whole heist was a perfect goodbye plan,” Holt explains. He explains that he set up Terry’s fake interview, he had Cheddar lead them to the Storage Solutions warehouse, and then… nope! It turns out Gina and Rosa have the real tube (they got away from everyone when Rosa said she was going after Pimento, which she wasn’t, really). Her other accomplice? Bill (Winston Story), the lookalike Boyle from an earlier heist.
And then… nope, yet again! They all get betrayed by Bill, who has the real tube, so they end up trapped in a storage locker. Jake accidentally spills the beans that he’s leaving, which shocks the squad, but there’s no time to discuss: They have to break out. Thankfully, Terry can bust through walls, and he does, breaking the squad free.
They track Bill to the precinct, where they meet the true grand champion of the Nine-Nine: Hitchcock. Yes, Hitchcock. He never really retired or moved to Brazil, and Bill came by and sold him the tube for $40. This makes him the grand champion (yikes). “We’ll always have the memories of our time together,” a deeply disappointed Jake says. “So, I say we hang out, have a drink, and enjoy being together one last time.”
So that’s what they do. Amy and Rosa have an emotional conversation in which they exchange platonic “I love you”s. Gina takes a bunch of diamonds from the evidence locker. Hitchcock and Scully hug. And Jake and Holt have a last conversation—he reflects that on his first day, Terry told him Jake was a great detective, but he couldn’t figure out how to grow up. Now, he has. “If I had a son, and he turned out like you, I would be very proud of him,” Holt says, bringing Jake to tears. Holt even makes the show’s final “Title of Your Sex Tape” joke (“I guess in the end, we rubbed off on each other quite a bit.”)
At the end, they all get into the elevator together, and as the door closes, Jake smiles.
As an epilogue of sorts, one year later, Jake and the rest of the squad come back to the precinct for another Halloween heist—because even though much has changed, Halloween heists are eternal. “We’re in each other’s lives forever, whether you like it or not,” Jake tells a confused, but happy, Terry. And together, they all chant the only final words it makes sense for the show to have: “Nine-Nine!”
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