Alexi Hawley unpacks that surprise finale return, Lucy and Tim’s “feel-good ending” and why Oscar might be running out of escapes
“The Rookie” Season 7 came to a close Tuesday night with an action-packed finale that, in classic “Rookie” fashion, left us with a big cliffhanger as we head into Season 8.
Back from her big international escape at the end of Season 6, lawyer-turned-baddie Monica (Bridget Regan) strutted back into the lives of the Mid-Wilshire crew with moments to spare in the Season 7 finale — now with immunity, after she leveraged highly-classified intel to make a deal.
Before we got to the big cliffhanger, Nolan came to life-or-death blows with Oscar (Matthew Glave) after the escaped convict abducted him. They both managed to make it out alive thanks to some quick work by Nyla (Mekia Cox), who recruited a kid with a drone to save the day, but not before taking heavy fire from Oscar’s ride — a helicopter that rained down gunfire while shepherding the longtime antagonist out of the law’s grasp once again. The consolation prize? He didn’t make off with his small fortune worth of diamonds.
Elsewhere, Lucy (Melissa O’Neil) started on the night shift after passing her sergeant exam, quickly whipping the ironically named “Dream Team” into shape, just in time to save Miles (Deric Augustine) from a near-death fake date. Speaking of Lucy, the finale also delivered a sweet if not-quite-conclusive resolution for her fan-favorite relationship with Tim (Eric Winter), which is still on the mend after he unexpectedly broke up with her last season.
The ABC hit brings Season 7 to a close as the series’ audience continues to swell. In fact, the recent episode “The Return,” which aired on April 29 and featured the much-anticipated return (and then, prompt farewell) of the sketchy rookie Seth (Patrick Keleher), notched a new series high in viewership during its first seven days on streaming. And it’s going to be another long wait for the growing fandom: ABC announced during their Tuesday upfronts presentation that “The Rookie” Season 8 will debut midseason in 2026.
Fortunately, series creator Alexi Hawley spoke with TheWrap to unpack the Season 7 ending and gave us some hints about what to expect in Season 8.
Putting Lucy on the night shift seems like a novel way to refresh the show. What does that offer you creatively that’s different from a new batch of rookies?
To a certain extent, it shows just that there’s a bigger world out there than what we see. I mean, it’s easy to form the comfort of like, “These are the cops in L.A. and this is the shift that we always see.”
It just sort of shows how the city is different at night, how you know they’re not necessarily the same brand of cops, at least in her “Dream Team,” so to speak. It felt like an opportunity to just sort of show that every place is not as comfortable, necessarily, as what she’s used to on a day shift.
It also seems like it could be a new challenge to your production schedule.
Well, yes. Look, I think at the end of the day, the obstacle of the night shift, it’s not gonna last too long into Season 8, partly because that starts to feel like punishment for her, which is not what we’re looking to do.
But also, yes, we as a show do not do a ton of night shoots. Partly because I want our cast and crew to have lives, but also just the turnaround is difficult; more and more difficult given the well-earned changes to hours and rules and stuff like that. So ultimately, a little bit of night goes a long way for us.
I have to talk about Tim and Lucy, of course, and we leave things in a more open-ended, very sweet, but more open-ended place than I was expecting. So I’m just curious why you wanted to leave their ongoing love story in that place as we close out this chapter?
Look, I feel like, even though we didn’t dot the i’s and cross the t’s, I think we’ve turned a corner. I think we built to a place where it is, for me, still a feel-good ending for their relationship. It made me laugh that she fell asleep on him.
But ultimately, the journey that we’ve been on this season really has gotten us to a place where we really believe him, that he’s done the work and that he cares so much about her, and we know that she cares about him, but also needed to forgive him. And we saw that process of moments where she had not quite done it yet, and that Great Melissa moment of discovering “I already did” in Episode 15. I do feel like, even though we might not have gotten all the way to the end of the journey, it still feels super happy ending to me.
As a viewer, I have found it really satisfying to follow through with this version of Tim on the other side of therapy after you introduced that in Season 6.
No, I agree. And I think it was really important to us that the bomb that he rolled in on the two of them was seismic, and it did not feel like something that had to be wrapped up in three episodes. It said a lot about the character, and the characters were forced to grow and to deal with some unpleasant truths and also some obstacles.
And I think it did help Lucy reprioritize her career. You know, part of the reason that the detective exam didn’t go well was because she sort of — making Tim happy and getting the two of them secure together, she made some enemies inside the department. And so, yeah, it just felt important that we don’t short trip it.
We have got Oscar on the lam once again. He’s a character who has been around for so long. He pops up, he does his devious deeds; why is he a character you like keeping in your Rogue’s Gallery of the “Rookie”-verse?
I love Oscar. I love Matthew Glave. It’s one of those cases of, you know, you write a one-off character, and then an actor comes in and you’re like, “Oh my God, I want to spend more time with them.” The trick is always to figure out a way to make it feel organic and earned, and not agree to just something unbelievable.
So I do think Oscar is probably just the most self-centered, selfish character. I believe that he spent the last year just trying to get money and do his thing, and ultimately, Nolan was sniffing around enough to find him.
That being said, I don’t think we can just chase him forever, and I don’t think it’ll be satisfying if he keeps getting away from us. So, yeah, I think in Season 8, we’re heading for some sort of resolution/can we figure out a next chapter for that character that feels good? Or maybe not, I don’t know at this point.
We did a bit of a switch from last season’s finale, Oscar’s in the wind, but Monica is back. What does “Monica with immunity” give you to play with in Season 8?
Well, it gives you some very frustrated cops, for one thing. The damage she did is real, and for her to be able to walk away from it is enraging on multiple levels for multiple characters.
I do think that ultimately, what our agenda is — the writers’ room started yesterday. I don’t remember if I said that out loud — is figuring out, are there aspects of the immunity deal that give us some story to tell going into Season 8? Because I don’t think just having her around to annoy our characters is really enough. So, yeah, that’s part of our journey, figuring out if there is an active story, an active criminality that we can figure out going forward.
Ok, something that jumped out at me, but might be nothing. Nyla and that kid. She straight up lied to that mom and threw that kid into a hail of gunfire!
No, she didn’t know there would be gunfire and she needed to find her partner.
100% promise he will be safe!
Well, s–t happens.
[Laughs] Nothing there, copy that.
I think at the moment, her priority was, “I have a partner who’s been taken by a stone-cold killer. For some reason, we’re in the middle of nowhere. I have no backup close by, and so this kid with a drone is a means to an end.” I think Harper considers herself incredibly capable and was able to protect him. I don’t think she thought that there was a possibility to run into a helicopter with a door gunner. That was not in her head. So I don’t think she knew she was lying. But I think I can admit that she also was saying what she needed to say to get that kid in the car with the drone so she could find Nolan.
You said you guys went into the writers’ room yesterday, so that’s very exciting, congrats.
Thank you very much.
As your show builds in popularity, but also continues to expand its tone and format, what do you consider your guiderails as you are thinking about your eighth season?
I think for us, trying to be unexpected is where I always try and live. I mean, I don’t consider “The Rookie” a procedural. It’s a patrol show. Anytime they get out of their car, anything can happen, and that’s something we always need to keep in the front of our brains in the room. We’re not launching a case in the teaser that we solved in the final act, which a lot of shows do. But that gives us a lot of leeway, as does the fact that we sort of do everything tonally.
So for me, and I film with directors this way too, and production sort of knows that the way we shoot an episode, the feel of the episode really is dictated by what story we’re telling. So when you have an episode, you know, that’s more fun or more of a ride than one that’s more emotional or serious — obviously, the hospital episode after James was shot, that’s just a very different episode than our finale. Or the episode where Lucy and Celina, in looking for that girl, showed up at that woman’s front door, and we did a bit of “Silence of the Lambs” in that house, you know, just being conscious of the different genres that we’re in.
I feel like we can do almost anything, but it needs to be grounded. It’s the only way that we can be joking around about something in one minute, and then have a tense scene, or an emotional scene, or action, or shocks or whatever. We can’t play the joke. If the scenario is funny, or a line is funny, the actors know to just try and be truthful about it. And so that’s the way we navigate all that. So I think we can do almost anything as a show, but it just needs to fall within those parameters.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
