‘The Rookie’: Shawn Ashmore & Alyssa Diaz Talk Tough Twist in Liam Glasser Case

Wesley (Shawn Ashmore) could really use a win right now. The Monday, March 16, episode of The Rookie saw him have to inform the LAPD that things weren’t going their way with the Liam Glasser (Seth Gabel) case, but that decade he would’ve been in jail if he’d taken a plea deal for involuntary manslaughter for one death looked pretty good compared to where they ended up.

As Glasser and his lawyer Malcolm (Sean Patrick Thomas) sat down with Wesley about the plea deal, Harrison Novak (Noel Fisher) was in the LAPD confessing to more crimes than just his own — he added Liam’s to his victim list as well, and he even had details that hadn’t been released to the public. It’s unclear how he got those, whether it was from Malcolm or even Wesley’s opponent in the DA race, Vivian (Necar Zadegan). But what matters is that by the end of the episode, Liam Glasser was free, and Wesley just wanted to get drunk enough to forget what had happened.

“Wesley’s devastated,” Ashmore tells TV Insider. “I think this raises the stakes even more. Vivian getting elected DA would be absolutely devastating, but I think he feels way more responsibility to put Liam Glasser back behind bars.”

He also says the last scene with Wesley and Angela (Alyssa Diaz), in which he’s not ready for a pep talk, “makes a lot of sense because he feels helpless. The opening scene with Wesley is basically telling the police officers, ‘We’ve done everything we can, and the best-case scenario is going to be a plea deal.’ And then when even that doesn’t work out, it’s like, now this guy who we know is a killer is back on the streets, and he’s manipulative, and he’s smart, and he’s played the system, and he’s got his lawyer, he’s got people working with him on this. He’s very, very devious. And it’s just a matter of time before he kills somebody again. That weighs very, very heavily on Wesley, probably more heavily than even the race.”

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Looking ahead, “It’s a tough thing moving forward, and I feel like he is not going to stop until he can hopefully put Liam Glasser back behind bars,” says Ashmore.

It’s not just Wesley who’s affected. So is Nyla (Mekia Cox), whose warning to Glasser that came out during her deposition set Wesley’s case back and got her demoted. Plus, one of the first things that Glasser did upon getting out of prison was to go visit her at work. He claimed he was going to go get his life back on track, but she warned him, “This isn’t over.”

So, for Angela, it’s about how this is affecting not just her husband but her best friend as well. “This is her work life that’s now affected. This is her home life. This is her friend, social life. And so I definitely think it weighs very heavily on her, and yeah, just really can’t escape it,” says Diaz.

The Rookie, Mondays, 10/9c, ABC