💡 The Finale Fatigue: Why The Rookie‘s Endings Are Starting to Crumble
Let’s be honest, we are deep into the run of The Rookie. It’s a fantastic, high-energy show that has miraculously maintained its blend of humor, action, and heart for season after season. But if we are going to be critical friends, we must address the glaring truth: the last two season finales, while filled with noise and action, have fundamentally fallen short. They’ve felt less like compelling conclusions and more like obligatory, overstuffed attempts at creating shocks and suspense that don’t quite land.
We love the characters, we crave the adrenaline, but the emotional logic often buckles under the weight of forced plotlines. And if you trace the root cause of this recent narrative instability, you often find one character whose presence—or rather, the perpetual chaos surrounding them—has become a persistent source of low-stakes, repetitive drama that bogs down the massive potential of the finales.
It’s time for The Rookie to perform necessary narrative surgery. Writing out Bailey Nune (Jenna Dewan), John Nolan’s now-wife, in Season 8 is the single, boldest move the show could make to not only improve its forthcoming finales but also to strengthen John Nolan’s character and restore the core focus of the series.
🚒 The Bailey Nune Conundrum: Too Much Chaos, Too Little Core
When Bailey Nune, the firefighter/yoga instructor/architect/self-defense expert, was introduced, she was meant to be the stabilizing, romantic endgame for John Nolan. But somewhere along the line, the writers confused “stable” with “magnet for catastrophic, unrealistic peril.”
The Problem of the Perpetual Victim/Hero
The biggest issue with Bailey is her narrative dualism that exists in every single episode she features in. She is either:
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The Victim: Constantly being targeted, kidnapped, framed, or put in mortal danger by villains who inexplicably target Nolan’s personal life with surgical precision.
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The Super-Hero: Possessing a completely unbelievable array of skills (firefighter, military reservist, self-defense expert, carpenter, etc.) that conveniently resolve the problem she was just the victim of.
This oscillation between extreme competence and extreme peril creates narrative whiplash and, crucially, erodes believability. Every time she appears, the audience holds their breath not out of suspense, but out of the expectation that something ridiculous is about to happen to her. This predictable pattern is detrimental to serious storytelling.
🚨 The Finales’ Failures: How Bailey Contributes to the Bloat
The last two season finales, designed to deliver peak adrenaline, have instead been diluted by the need to resolve whatever outlandish crisis Bailey has found herself in.
The Precedent of Repetitive Peril
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Season 5 Finale Overload: While the entire squad was embroiled in the intense storyline involving the masked assailants, the necessity of incorporating Bailey’s personal jeopardy into the main plot felt forced. Her inclusion often shifts the focus from the complex, external threat facing the LAPD to Nolan’s singular, domestic obligation to save his fiancé.
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The Unearned Wedding Drama: The entire storyline leading up to their wedding was packed with artificial drama designed to prevent the ceremony from happening smoothly. It felt like a checklist of contrived conflicts rather than a natural conclusion to the season’s arcs.
H3: Stealing the Spotlight from the Core Cast
The show is supposed to be about the challenges facing John Nolan, Lucy Chen, Tim Bradford, and the police work at the station. However, by continually creating life-or-death, high-stakes plots around Bailey, the writers use up valuable finale screen time that could be dedicated to resolving long-running arcs for the core ensemble.
For instance, a finale should focus on Lucy Chen’s growth as a detective, Tim Bradford’s career crisis, or Angela Lopez’s major case. Instead, the final act often has to pivot back to saving Bailey, diminishing the importance of the police work itself.
🎬 The Creative Freedom: What Season 8 Gains from Her Exit
Removing Bailey Nune from the show is not just about eliminating a pet peeve; it’s about providing the creative freedom needed to restore narrative quality and allow John Nolan to evolve genuinely.
Restoring Nolan’s Edge
John Nolan’s journey has always been about proving his worth as an officer. Marrying Bailey seemed to immediately complete his personal life, creating a comfortable complacency that dulls his edge.
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Conflict is King: Great drama thrives on conflict. If Nolan is perpetually happy at home, the writers must manufacture chaos externally (like making his wife a target). Removing Bailey—perhaps through an amicable but geographically necessary separation (she gets a massive, permanent firefighter promotion out of state)—would reintroduce a vital element of personal, internal conflict into Nolan’s life. He could focus on his TO role, date, and struggle with work-life balance in a realistic, non-catastrophic way.
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Focus on the Badge: It would allow Nolan to become fully dedicated to his job as a Training Officer, mirroring his growth and prioritizing his professional arc over his rushed domestic bliss.
H4: Returning to Realistic Relationship Dynamics
If Nolan is going to have a healthy relationship, it needs to be with someone who doesn’t need to be rescued every three episodes. Bailey’s departure would signal the show is ready to handle dating and romance in a way that respects reality—not by creating a character who is a professional Jack-of-All-Trades, but by showing the actual, mundane difficulty of dating while working in law enforcement.
⚖️ The Logic of Separation: An Amicable, Non-Fatal Exit
The show doesn’t need to kill Bailey; in fact, killing her would be a major mistake, setting up another season of trauma for Nolan. The ideal exit should be final but peaceful, avoiding the tragic clichés that The Rookie is desperately trying to escape.
The “Too Successful” Scenario
The perfect exit strategy is to make Bailey too successful for Los Angeles.
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Fire Chief Promotion: She could receive an incredible promotion to Fire Chief or a high-ranking position in the National Guard, requiring her to relocate permanently to a different state or even a different country.
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Mutual Respect: The separation could be written as a mutual recognition that their careers are too demanding and their geographical paths no longer align. They remain friends and respect each other, but the marriage simply can’t survive the distance. This honors the characters while respecting the narrative needs of the show.
This approach gives Nolan the necessary freedom without burying him in unnecessary grief, allowing Season 8 to start with the slate clean and the tone reset.
✅ The Redemption Arc: How Season 8 Can Shine
With the chaos of the Bailey Nune storyline removed, Season 8 can immediately pivot back to the show’s strengths, promising redemption for the last two messy finales.
Deepening Core Character Arcs
The narrative energy freed up by her exit can be reinvested into the rich, ongoing stories of the core ensemble:
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Lucy Chen’s Detective Grind: Devoting more time to Lucy’s challenges and victories in the Detective Bureau. Let’s see the complex cases and moral compromises that define her new role.
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Tim Bradford’s Leadership: Focusing on Tim’s professional development as a Sergeant. Explore his relationship with his sister, his struggles with leadership, and his journey with Lucy outside the confines of the patrol car (and the ridiculous conflicts of the last finales).
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Nolan as a Mentor: Emphasizing Nolan’s role as a Training Officer, showcasing his wisdom and growth by focusing on the struggles of his new rookie.
H4: Elevating the Stakes Organically
Without the contrived, personal crises, The Rookie can return to organically elevating the stakes. The threats can be external, complex, and city-wide, rather than villains narrowly targeting the one firefighter Nolan happens to be dating. This restores the seriousness and believability that the show’s finales have lacked recently.
⭐ The Final Verdict: Sacrifice the Familiar for the Future
Ultimately, the choice facing the writers of The Rookie Season 8 is whether to prioritize the comfort of a familiar romantic pairing or the integrity of the show’s overall narrative structure. While Jenna Dewan is a fantastic actress, the character of Bailey Nune has become a narrative drain, constantly manufacturing low-quality drama that detracts from the high-quality police procedural elements the show is famous for. Cutting this character is the hard but necessary move that would instantly reset the show’s internal logic, providing the necessary emotional and plot freedom for Season 8 to deliver the high-stakes, well-written finale that fans desperately need and deserve.
Final Conclusion
The single most effective action The Rookie Season 8 could take to redeem the show’s recent string of weak finales is to write out the character of Bailey Nune. Her dual status as a perpetual victim and an unrealistically skilled super-hero creates narrative bloat and steals essential screen time from the core police ensemble, contributing directly to the unearned drama of the last two season conclusions. An amicable, career-driven exit for the character—perhaps a massive promotion that requires relocation—would free up John Nolan’s storyline, restore realistic conflict to his life, and allow the writers to pivot back to focusing on the complex professional journeys of Lucy Chen, Tim Bradford, and Nolan’s new role as a Training Officer, guaranteeing a stronger, more focused finale for Season 8.
❓ 5 Unique FAQs After The Conclusion
Q1: Has there been any official word that Jenna Dewan (Bailey Nune) is leaving The Rookie for Season 8?
A1: No, there has been no official confirmation from ABC, the showrunners, or Jenna Dewan regarding her departure from The Rookie. This article discusses the character’s exit purely as a necessary narrative prediction to improve the show’s long-term quality.
Q2: Why is Bailey Nune’s character often criticized for being a “Mary Sue” by some fans?
A2: Fans often label Bailey Nune a “Mary Sue” due to her unrealistic number of professional skills (firefighter, reservist, self-defense expert, etc.), which are often introduced precisely when the plot needs them. This perfection and lack of realistic professional limitation make her feel less like a human character and more like a convenient plot device.
Q3: Which major character exit set a positive narrative precedent for The Rookie in the past?
A3: The exit of Captain Zoe Andersen (Mercedes Mason) in Season 1, though tragic, set a strong precedent. Her death provided immediate, high-stakes emotional weight and propelled Nolan and the squad’s growth, proving that character exits, when handled correctly, can serve the overall narrative powerfully.
Q4: How would removing Bailey help solve the “Finale Fatigue” problem?
A4: Removing Bailey would eliminate the artificial domestic crisis that has cluttered recent finales. It would force the writers to focus the finale’s energy on the more complex, external threats related to police work, which are inherently higher-stakes and more central to the show’s premise.
Q5: Would John Nolan have to revert to the single, dating life immediately if Bailey Nune left?
A5: Not necessarily immediately. Nolan’s character could focus on his new role as a Training Officer, using his professional duties as the primary source of drama. His eventual return to the dating scene could then be handled realistically, showcasing the difficulties of dating as a veteran police officer without the immediate need for a contrived romantic partner.
