‘S.W.A.T. Exiles’: Shemar Moore & Ronen Rubinstein Break Down Hondo’s Discovery & Jude’s Hookup

A moment that we’ve been waiting for since the premiere twist comes in the latest S.W.A.T. Exiles episode. Plus, two of Hondo’s (Shemar Moore) recruits hook up. TV Insider spoke with Shemar Moore, Ronen Rubinstein, and executive producer Jason Ning about those moments and more. Warning: Spoilers for S.W.A.T. Exiles Season 1 Episode 3 ahead!

The series premiere revealed that one of the recruits, Malik (Adain Bradley), is spying on him, claiming that he doesn’t deserve to wear the badge. In Episode 3, Hondo figures out that one of his team is a mole when Pike (Lenora Crichlow) calls him out on withholding details from an after-action report — information that only one of the recruits could’ve known.

“Once we gave it to the audience, we wanted Hondo to find out because we didn’t want Hondo to stay too far behind the audience,” Ning explains. “But the cool conflict for me is, what does Hondo do once he has that information, that he knows there’s a mole? And his instinct might be to confront him right away and weed him out, but there are other options there. He can see how this mole reacts. He can perhaps plant stories to see how they come back to him.”

Moore points out that the Hondo that we find when Exiles picks up is one who has been through a lot — divorce, his mom’s death, and the loss of the job he loved. “He doesn’t know where to turn for any safe space. He does have his brothers out there — Deacon [Jay Harrington], Hicks [Patrick St. Esprit], Tan [David Lim], and the old team. The old team still exists. The history still exists. So you will see appearances to help Hondo keep his sanity and kind of structure of what he needs to do. But within his own team, he feels like, ‘OK, this is my team. I’m going to teach you. You need to trust me.’ And then he finds out that he can’t even trust them.”

Courtesy of Starz

The episode then ends with Jude (Rubinstein) and Sammy (Lucy Barrett) hanging out at Ethan’s (Freddy Miyares), where he’s now staying since he was sleeping at HQ because the corporate housing he’d been set up in after being undercover didn’t feel like him. She can relate; she’s not feeling like herself, either, with the intense nature of the job. And that leads into them hooking up, even as they agree it’s a terrible idea. But what is it about Sammy for Jude? After all, there also seems to be something about her that he seems to trust. Rubinstein agrees.

“I think there’s glimpses of it in the first episode. They kind of come together and figure out that, OK, we’re going to have to make some noise if we’re going to stand out in this group. They’re very different, and we see that from the moment they meet. He basically kind of insults her. So the fact that that’s their start to where they end up in [Episode] 3 is a beautiful journey for them,” he says.

“But there’s a really lovely moment in that scene in Episode 2 — Sammy coming to Jude and offering him a shoulder to lean on,” Rubinstein adds. “She’s the first person that asks him like, ‘Hey, man, what’s going on? Why is your file like that? What happened to you?’ I think that was probably the first time he heard somebody reach out to him like that in a long time. And the fact that she did have that olive branch, I think he took it, but he did stop himself short of actually revealing what happened to him because I don’t think he’s ready to truly talk about it just yet. But we’ll definitely explore it soon enough.”

He does acknowledge that their relationship “could get very complicated.” He adds, “It’s definitely frowned upon when you’re hooking up with a coworker, especially in that field.”

According to Ning, there’s more to come between those two. “We’re teasing elements of it, and a lot of it has to do with Jude’s backstory and history of where he was undercover for two years, and that will be kind of a huge fulcrum in their relationship, and it’ll explode in Episode 6, which is one of my favorite episodes,” he previews.

Elsewhere in the episode, the team goes after a shooter, and when Hondo talks him down, he can certainly relate to what he’s telling him — working hard for an institution he was proud of, clocking out and going home to the woman he loved, giving everything he had, then losing it. Hondo is back with S.W.A.T., but he’s still lost Nichelle (Rochelle Aytes, who won’t appear in Season 1). So, does Hondo feel like there’s any hope of them getting back together?

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Moore notes that Hondo was in “a dark place” after being “burned” by S.W.A.T. and taking the hit for the mission that resulted in Nico Reyes’ death. “In that darkness, he lost his wife. His mother passed away due to illness. To me, as the actor and executive producer, I think flaws and hardship bring out more humanity,” he says.

“And I think to watch a man, a person, a human hit rock bottom and have to dig his way out, because you can either stay down or you can get up — I just love the story of perseverance. And so Hondo has to realize that he’s got a little girl out there and his father wasn’t there for him in the way that he felt he should have been, but Hondo is damn sure going to be there for his daughter. So he wants to be the best version of himself for his daughter,” Moore continues. “But he wasn’t a Marine for nothing. He didn’t spend all these years on S.W.A.T. for nothing. And so does he just walk away and throw in the towel? But that’s not Hondo’s character. So when he comes back in, and especially when he finds out the machine is really against him, not once but twice, he’s got a serious chip on his shoulder. So the only way you’re going to take Hondo out — and trust me, they try — is you’re going to have to kill him. And if you don’t kill him, Hondo ain’t going to quit until he finds his justice and gets his redemption. And then in that, maybe he’ll find his light, maybe he’ll find his joy, maybe he’ll trust again. And in that, who knows? Maybe there’s a reconnection with Nichelle, the mother of his child and the love of his life.”

Moore and Aytes played love interests on Criminal Minds before S.W.A.T., but he made sure she kept that quiet when it came to casting the role on the latter. “I said, ‘I know somebody,’ and I purposely didn’t tell them that she was my love interest on Criminal Minds. I told Richelle, ‘Don’t say nothing. Don’t say nothing. Let them Google you. Let them ask some questions, but if they don’t ask, don’t tell,'” he tells TV Insider of the “in-house secret to make sure it happened.” “I was like, ‘Let’s just get you over here.’ And then she got the job. Then I went to a producer, I was like, ‘Did you know? Did you know that me and her had a thing on Criminal Minds?’ They were like, ‘No.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s what I thought.'”

As for how Jude crashing at Ethan’s is going to go, especially with that secret room and how long Jude can resist snooping, Rubinstein promises that will be explored.

“However, I think it’s going to surprise a lot of people about how Jude handles that, because I do think they start developing a friendship and a trust, and I don’t know if Jude — because Ethan literally gives Jude a place to stay, and that’s another huge olive branch to extend to this guy that I don’t think gets much love and support in his life. So between Sammy and Ethan, I do think there’s a level of respect, and I don’t know if he necessarily would want to jeopardize that,” he says. “But trust me, we are going to explore what is in that room, and that is a beautiful storyline for Freddy, and I’m very excited for people to see that.”

What did you think of the latest episode? Let us know in the comments section below.

S.W.A.T. Exiles, Fridays, Starz