‘The Rookie’ Boss & Mekia Cox Say Liam Glasser Is a ‘Ticking Bomb’ in Season 9

Heading into The Rookie Season 9 (returning in early 2027 as part of ABC’s midseason lineup), the LAPD has a couple of recurring bad guys to deal with. There’s Everett (Jeffrey Vincent Parise), back in custody, though people working for him have kidnapped Tim (Eric Winter) and Lucy (Melissa O’Neil) right after they got engaged. But there’s also serial killer Liam Glasser (Seth Gabel), who ended up not being prosecuted for his crimes and instead was actually someone the officers had to protect at one point.

That second one is especially tough for Nyla (Mekia Cox), since Glasser’s lawyer used what she said to his client before they had enough evidence to arrest him to his benefit; she was demoted as a result. So, how is she doing with him still being out there?

“Not well,” Cox told TV Insider recently. “She’s also had to deal with this litigation with the lawyers and she’s trying to figure out — she’s also had to deal with the fact that she got demoted for a little while and that was hard for her and so he’s causing a lot of roughness in her life that she wasn’t expecting and so I think she’s at this point where she’s like, ‘I would like him behind bars forever.'” That’s a sentiment that everyone involved with this case shares.

Showrunner Alexi Hawley told us after the Season 8 finale that it’s not just Nyla who blames 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 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,” he noted.

Related

'The Rookie: North': Jay Ellis and Janet Montgomery Preview New Spinoff (Exclusive)

“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,” he continued. “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 24/7. We don’t know what’s going to happen. So yeah, it’ll be interesting to explore that next season.”

This is also the path that Hawley shared he knew Glasser’s storyline was going to take.

“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. 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,'” Hawley explained. “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. That’s really juicy stuff. So yeah, him being out there is for sure a ticking bomb.”

What are you hoping to see with Glasser in Season 9? Let us know in the comments section below.

The Rookie, Season 9 Premiere, 2027, ABC