‘The Rookie’ Just Delivered One of Its Best & Most Chilling Episodes

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Rookie Season 8 Episode 3 “The Red Place.”]

Listen, we’re always going to think of one of the best episodes of TV ever, ER‘s “All in the Family,” when we think of David Krumholtz. And so that’s, of course, our first reaction upon seeing him in the Tuesday, January 20, episode of The Rookie. It quickly becomes clear that there’s much more to his character than meets the eye. But hey, at least he doesn’t leave anyone from the LAPD bleeding out while there’s a party going on.

Krumholtz’s character is introduced as Ezra Kane, seemingly just guilty of trespassing in a rec center, looking for somewhere to sleep — until Angela (Alyssa Diaz) and Nyla (Mekia Cox) alert Nolan (Nathan Fillion) that his fingerprints match the only one that was found at the scene of a triple homicide three years ago in Oregon. And so, while Angela, Nyla, and Wesley (Shawn Ashmore) observe, Nolan interrogates him, ostensibly about the stolen credit cards found on him and trying to keep him in the dark about how much they know while they dig into him.

It works, and all the interrogation room scenes in this episode with Ezra, with Nolan, then the others, are top-notch and what help make this such a strong outing. For every question Ezra has about Nolan’s inquiries, the officer has an answer, but the same is also true of the suspect when it comes to those credit cards, why he doesn’t have a birth certificate, and the like.

The break comes when Lucy (Melissa O’Neil) and Celina (Lisseth Chavez) check out a motel room he’s paying for with one of the aforementioned credit cards and find the teenage girl he was thought to have killed alongside her parents. Samantha didn’t leave even after Ezra did because he’d threatened to kill her parents if she did; she still thought they were alive. She reveals that he had her call him Amon, a marquis of hell (with disturbing drawings in the motel room to back it up) who commands 40 legions including the police, and he said she was his soulmate. Samantha’s the one to alert them to the car that Ezra has — and to get them to realize that he’s taken another girl. He’d told Samantha that he was getting ready for “after,” and she’d taken it to mean after he killed her.

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It’s when Nolan brings up the motel to Ezra that he realizes they ran his prints and know, and this is where we get the turn from David Krumholtz from “innocent” trespasser to disturbing perpetrator who’s ready for the “main course,” leading to Angela, Nyla, and Wesley joining them. While the detectives take over the interrogation, Nolan and Tim (Eric Winter) go to the rec center where Ezra was and find car keys, blood, then his next victim’s ID, Julie.

Ezra, meanwhile, confirms he was going to kill Samantha that day, and knowing he’ll never get a reduced sentence, will only tell them where Julie is if he can say goodbye to Samantha. They refuse, but he pushes them to tell her Julie is near the red place — and when Samantha overhears Lucy and Celina using that phrase, she panics, locks her hospital room door, and stabs herself with a syringe. Ezra succeeded in doing the exact thing they didn’t want him to: He retraumatized her by having her hear the police use his own language after he’d told her they were working with him. Lucy’s able to get her help, and Nolan, off Samantha’s description of the car, is able to find Julie, bleeding badly but alive in the trunk. Ezra’s taken away in cuffs but looks back at Nolan as he is.

This case also brings up Lucy’s own trauma, first with Celina noting that they’ve never talked about it, especially after her sister’s case, then when the sergeant talks to Samantha near the end of the episode. The first step of recovery is to stop blaming herself, Lucy says, and she knows it’s easier said than done. She tells her about how, her rookie year, she went on a date with a guy who kidnapped her, “the details are a lot,” and she thought she was going to die — and probably would have in another five minutes. For months after, she obsessed over her time with him before he drugged her, how she should have reacted, and then she started focusing on what she did do instead of didn’t: She survived. Samantha survived. Her aunt is coming, and there’s a plan in place for every female cop to keep her company in the weeks to follow, until she feels safe.

Elsewhere in the episode, Lucy and Tim are finally going to unpack her boxes after she moved in — well, he’s going to, and she’s going to supervise after the tough day she had — and Angela and Wesley both forget their wedding anniversary but she hastily throws together some decorations, just going to remind us why we love them so much. Oh, and in the lone weak part of the episode, Seth (Patrick Keleher) returns and Miles (Deric Augustine) agrees to give him another chance as long as he’s honest, and if we’re being honest, we don’t really need to keep seeing Seth.

What did you think of this episode? Would you want to see David Krumholtz again? Let us know in the comments section below.

The Rookie, New Time Period Premiere, Monday, January 26, 10/9c, ABC