‘The Rookie’ Boss Breaks Down Chenford’s Shocking Finale Ending

This is The Rookie. Of course it gives us a bit of happiness and then takes it away in the final moments of the Season 8 finale. The May 4 episode sees the LAPD busy dealing with the transfer of international crime boss Heath Everett (Jeffrey Vincent Parise) going terribly awry, all while Tim (Eric Winter) tries to figure out when he’ll propose to Lucy (Melissa O’Neil) before she finds out, and it all converges. TV Insider spoke with showrunner Alexi Hawley about that and more. Warning: Spoilers for The Rookie Season 8 finale ahead!

Everett escapes during the transfer to the courthouse, but the LAPD puts together an op to get him back, one that requires being stealthy while searching the ship he plans to use to get out of L.A. They do get him back in custody and everyone survives — there’s some fun Smokey and the Bandit fun for Nolan (Nathan Fillion) in making his way off the boat when he just so happens to find a certain car — but his reach is far, as is revealed in the final moments (more on that shortly).

Elsewhere, no one’s happy when they find out that Wesley (Shawn Ashmore) has joined Everett’s legal team, but as Angela (Alyssa Diaz) reveals to Tim, it’s only so he can secretly investigate Malcolm (Sean Patrick Thomas), who’s also Glasser’s (Seth Gabel) lawyer.

The moment that fans had been waiting for comes near the end of the episode. Tim takes Lucy to the beach, and after she asks, “Do you ever have that feeling where a moment is so perfect you’re trying to memorize it while you’re experiencing it?” he gives her another reason to want to remember that day. He gets down on one knee and proposes: “When we met, I had come to believe the world was a really dark place, and for the last eight years, you showed me just how much light there really is. 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?” She says yes!

But Chenford doesn’t have much time to celebrate. A man and woman walk over, congratulate them, then inject both in the neck. As they lose consciousness, the woman says, “Heath Everett says payback is a bitch.” With that, as they hold hands, bags are put over their heads. Uh-oh!

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Below, showrunner Alexi Hawley breaks down the Season 8 finale and shares early Season 9 details.

Tim and Lucy are engaged. Before we get to the cliffhanger involving them though, what had you wanted to do with the proposal itself and what he said?

Alexi Hawley: The finale and then the episode before where Tim had to describe his relationship and her and why she’s perfect for him, I thought were real opportunities that of course the actors nailed to really get in under the hood on why they are together and why she is perfect for him. And I do think Tim has been on ultimately a bigger journey since the pilot, given how broken he was from Isabel and his childhood and all that kind of stuff. So it did feel like we needed to make space for that realization that literally she fixed parts of him that he didn’t really understand were broken and something that was really important to me during the breakup season was that she still was generous with him despite the fact that he broke her heart, that she was there for him when things were bad, even though — and that sort of kindness, which he thanked her for, obviously in that one scene, is part of the journey to get there. And so I think that he needed to recognize that.

And I think for Tim, part of the fun of the lead up into the finale is he doesn’t know how to propose really. He knows inherently that he’s not an Instagram guy. Proposals have become so performative and that’s not him at all. But that’s why I love the scene with Grey [Richard T. Jones], where Grey’s like, look, it’s a story you’re going to tell your grandkids. So it just needs to be genuine. It doesn’t need to be crazy. It just needs to be real. And yeah, so it worked out really well.

Were Tim and Lucy always going to be part of the cliffhanger? It traces all the way back to that bribe that Everett tried to offer. So did you know back then that’s where you were going to carry that through?

Yes. That was set up all the way back then on purpose so that ultimately we get to our cliffhanger.

Lucy was always going to be part of the cliffhanger, too?

No, I went back and forth. Well, I went a little bit back and forth on whether it should be one or the other that was taken, but then it ultimately felt like it’s their journey together. So yeah, so there was some initial thought about whether it would be both of them, but pretty quickly it was like that’s what it should be.

How worried should we be about them? Because there’s a reason that they were taken and not just shot and left for dead.

Right. Yeah. I think we should be worried for sure. I mean, as a show, we definitely push the envelope with some of our characters and stuff like that. And there are real stakes on the show. That said, I also don’t want to send the internet scrambling and freaking out too much, but I do think that, yes, that the stakes are real, that ultimately where we would find them in Season 9, which is still a little — we need to figure it out, the writers’ room hasn’t started yet and stuff like that. But I think you’re right, there is a reason they were taken and not killed.

Also you’re really good at exploring the fallout of the trauma and everything like you did with Lucy this season.

Oh, well, thanks. Yeah, no, that was important. She had never taken a life in the line of duty, and so that felt like we needed to … I mean, a lot of cop shows, they just throw bullets around and then go to lunch and stuff like that. And so for us, we’re always at least —I mean, we walk that line or try and walk that line on an action-forward show and the repercussions of that. But the fact that it was a knife, that it was much more primal, that it was … All that was on purpose. And then in the aftermath of that, it’s not like Lucy hasn’t gone through some incredible trauma. The being put in the barrel and all that was deeply traumatic. So she does have some resources on dealing with trauma that a lot of people don’t. But that being said, it’s just different, especially because this person was not in their right mind and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, but I appreciate that because that was important to us to try and really honor that journey.

Disney/Mike Taing

So Wesley took on Everett as a client to investigate Malcolm, and Malcolm has been a thorn in his side since his introduction. Can you say how long Wesley has been planning to do something about him? Not necessarily like he was like, oh, I’ll do it this way. But was he always planning on finding a way in like that?

I think he and Lopez definitely think that that story’s not fully told yet, I mean, the risk to Wesley’s life, but also just the damage to that man and feeling like Malcolm has been complicit with some things. I think it was percolating in the background. I think Malcolm showing up at his door was an opportunity that of course he didn’t tell his wife about in the moment.

But yes, I think ultimately that is a journey for Season 9, this is a guy who’s sort of the worst version of a defense lawyer and now as Wesley’s all the way back into being a defense lawyer, it’s going to be interesting because who Wesley is after being in the DA’s office and after really becoming team police is different than it used to be when he was defending people like Elijah [Brandon Jay McLaren] and stuff like that. And so that’ll be interesting going forward to see where that line is set now.

Speaking of, having Wesley and Sean working together and opening their own firm, it’s fun. I like that. What do you enjoy most about putting them together to do so this season? And going forward, does any of that depend on Michael Trucco‘s schedule or would it just be like he could be off screen?

I definitely — and I’ve talked to Trucco about it. I mean, we love having him on the show. He’s obviously incredibly busy, and so we’re always trying to navigate that. We usually have a pretty good sense in advance of when we might need him when we try and navigate through that.

Yeah, I love the two of them together. I think that’s really fun. I’m always looking at how next season’s not going to be like this season and how, and I do feel like every season has its own personality. And so I’m interested in that chapter. I mean, obviously, there’ll be stories where Wesley can be defending somebody if Trucco’s not available or whatever, where the firm still exists, but I don’t need to see both of them, but I’d love to see more of Trucco if we could.

What about the character of Vivian? Necar Zadegan now has CIA, so is that kind of also playing into what we would see there or are you kind of moving away from that?

That makes it harder. I mean, I would love to revisit that because I do think she was complicit with Malcolm and Glasser. I do think that she was a mercenary in that way. It does get harder, obviously when an actor you love becomes a series regular on something else. But yes, I mean, I think that we’d have to navigate that for sure.

So Everett is back in custody, but as we’ve seen, villains on The Rookie do keep popping back up. You did leave him alive. You also have Glasser, who is still out there, so you have these two big villains still in the cards at the end of the season. Did you always know you wanted that?

I knew with Glasser. I mean, I think we had been setting up Glasser’s ultimately not getting prosecuted for a long time, and he really was very smart in how he laid it out. It didn’t feel like a leap to us. We actually, Fredrick Kotto’s a writer who’s been on the show since the beginning who was a former police officer up in San Jose, and we had him check our math at the beginning of the season just looking back over and he’s like, oh, he totally has an argument to not get prosecuted. And so yeah, we were on that journey for a while and then I loved this season that we end up having to protect him. It’s just really, that’s really juicy stuff. So yeah, so him being out there is for sure a ticking bomb.

And then yeah, Everett obviously is going to play at the beginning of the season clearly because we know that he’s behind what’s going on. It’s always interesting to try and navigate — we haven’t seen Elijah in several seasons until we saw him this time, which was great. And I’d love to find out. I mean, he’s an amazing actor too, but I don’t necessarily just want somebody like mustache to really from their prison cell. That to me is not that exciting. So yeah, it’s just about figuring out ways to make it feel organic.

The bandit, the car with Nolan was so good.

It’s one of my favorite things that we’ve ever done. And it came out of, we were literally Bill Roe and I, we were scouting that ship walking around trying to figure out what to do because sometimes you’ll have the script fully written and all that kind of stuff, but sometimes you want to go scout — you want to write for the location. And so we went there on the scout to check out that boat and we were brainstorming a little bit and the driving up the ramp presented itself. And then I threw out the Smokey and the Bandit car and then immediately that was great. And back when we did the Prague episode, Bill’s the one who suggested there was a busker singing “Daddy Cop” on the bridge, which was also one of my favorite things. So yeah, that was one of those moments, and it doesn’t happen a ton, where it’s so much better when you see it than you imagine it in your head. And just when the song comes in and Nathan, of course, got the assignment completely on what that was supposed to be, so good.

Disney/Mike Taing

How’s Nyla (Mekia Cox) doing with Glasser still out there? Because you also put her through it this season with him and then getting demoted because of him.

Yeah, it’s not good. I think she does blame herself. I think they all blame themselves in different ways. I think she definitely does because I think hers was the doorway into it being dismissed, the fact that she sort of went rogue and threatened him — which again, is one of those moments that’s satisfying on an audience emotional level. We love that scene where she showed up at the end and she’s like, “We’re watching you and I’m going to hang this thing around your neck.” But from a police civil rights criminal standard, it’s not good. So I like that we still managed to find consequences for stuff that does cross lines, as satisfying as it is, the sort of noble cause corruption that we’ve been talking about for seasons now. And so yeah, I do think it’ll have lasting repercussions. And again, with Glasser out there with nobody really … I mean, nobody’s surveilling him twenty four seven. We don’t know what’s going to happen. So yeah, it’ll be interesting to explore that next season.

You kind of briefly touched on the fact that the task force is ending and what that would mean for Grey. Can you say what he’s weighing when he’s looking at his future right now?

I think it’s about feeling like reinvention and moving forward a little bit. I think his wife’s journey really has reawoken his journey a little bit. Obviously, he was talking about retiring way back at the beginning, and then a lot of things happened, and he ultimately didn’t pull the trigger on that, and she got tired of waiting. And so yeah, I mean, I think his calculus will be like, “What do I want to do next?” I mean, his rank and his experience and the years on the job give him a good amount of choices. And so part of what we got to figure out going into next season is what’s the one that gives us the most story that’s the most satisfying on a good and a dramatic level with him and go from there.

Is there anything you can say about Season 9 and when it would pick up? Anything that we would see with any of the characters?

I think it’ll pick up fairly — I don’t think it’s immediate. I think at this point, you know me a little bit, I just like to go, so I don’t want to be trying to figure some s**t out. I kind of want to be actionable from the beginning. I think we might know or think we know where they are. We might be going to get them. Something like that will be going on from there. So it’ll be days, maybe a week or two, depending on how long we need for other storytelling purposes, because that’s always the challenge when we do these episodes that are split. Prague was split between LA and Prague. And so if you’re trying to tell stories in two different places or whatever, they need to have equal weight. And so yeah, there’s some stuff to figure out for sure, but it’ll be fairly quick turnaround.

The Rookie, Season 9, TBA, ABC