The Rookie Season 7 Finale Recap: Villains, Drama, and That Chenford Cliffhanger You Can’t Miss

This week, The Rookie Season 7 comes to a close in a surprisingly low-key fashion. For the previous two seasons, series creator Alexi Hawley ramped up the action, the stakes and the drama, moving the show away from its initial premise around training rookie officers in the LAPD. The seventh season, which only had a single-week hiatus since its premiere, marked not just a return to form, but a clear evolution in how the show approaches its storytelling, from a renewed focus on the street-level policing to planting the seeds for new stories and giving them time to grow.

In the Season 6 finale, The Rookie went big, sending John Nolan (Nathan Fillion) and Nyla Harper (Mekia Cox) on an operation to do cowboy heroics during a CIA operation. While still delivering harrowing action set pieces in “The Good, The Bad and The Oscar,” the Season 7 finale feels “small,” in the best way. Rather than chasing criminals across the globe or leaping from moving cars like something out of Mad Max: Fury Road, the focus remains firmly on the characters. Recurring villain Oscar Hutchinson (Matthew Glave) seemed destined for his final showdown with Nolan. Also, fans expected something (anything) that addressed the burgeoning reunion of Tim Bradford (Eric Winter) and Lucy Chen (Melissa O’Neil), now that he’s no longer her supervisor. After a tease earlier in the season, fans expected to see Monica Stevens (Bridget Regan) again, too. And they do — but how she returns is the clearest sign that The Rookie’s storytellers have grown confident and more patient.

The Rookie’s Central Season Finale Story Is an Interesting Change of Pace

John Nolan Versus Oscar Hutchinson Continues for Another Season

While he’s supposed to be one of The Rookie’s most unforgivable villains, audiences can’t help but like Oscar. Glave perfected his “affable sociopath” performance years ago, enough that some fans likely want Nolan to really be his friend. One of the best moments in the finale comes when Oscar tells Nolan theirs “is the most stable relationship [he has] ever had.” Audiences may wonder why the writers choose to let him escape on a helicopter rather than going out in a blaze of glory. It’s because viewers believe Oscar when he says this, just as they accept he absolutely would have murdered Nolan just the same.

While Oscar’s temporary partner-in-crime Jason Wyler stayed in L.A. after their escape, Oscar disappeared. He only re-entered the series’ orbit to collect on the $10 million in diamonds his crew stole and hid years ago. Ironically, if Oscar had allowed the old crew to split their haul, Nolan and Harper likely never would have found him. Of course, while Nolan misses the chance to capture or kill Oscar, he does pocket the diamonds, leaving his nemesis with nothing. Lest viewers worry how the armed gunman who rescues Oscar will take this news, Nolan tells his colleagues that police found both the chopper and those mercenaries’ dead bodies.

Unlike most police dramas, the best episodes of The Rookie do not always end with a dramatic shootout and a dead suspect. There’s an unkind insider term among procedural writers for stories they call “schmuck bait.” What this means is only those viewers so immersed in the story they forget how TV shows work can believe that John Nolan faces mortal danger. What makes “The Good, The Bad and The Oscar” work so well is that there are surely a significant number of viewers more concerned with Oscar’s fate (and his continued presence in the series) than Nolan’s. It’s a credit to both the writers’ development of the character, and Glave’s delivery.

The Season 7 Finale of The Rookie Balances 3 Smaller Police Stories in a Clever Way

Lucy Chen’s New Role Is the Focal Point, but the Ensemble Isn’t Left Behind

While Season 6’s finale risked being almost silly, it was also one of Lucy Chen’s best episodes. When The Rookie creates its over-the-top action, Lucy is often right in the thick of it. This is why the Season 7 finale’s opening is so brilliant. As the new supervisor of the night shift, Lucy takes a number of calls which, in any other episode, would be intense. But this time, as soon as she responds to a call, the episode jump-cuts to her radioing “Code Four,” meaning everything is okay. Still, this is The Rookie, so it’s not long before Lucy finds the kind of life-and-death situation where she does her best work.

The weakest story in the finale is mostly played for laughs, following Angela Lopez (Alyssa Diaz) and Wesley Evers (Shawn Ashmore) investigating a ridiculous case. A sad sack named Julius (Scott Michael Campbell) robs a bank to pay for an operation for his online girlfriend. He’s stunned when Lopez points out his only photo of her is an AI-generated image. Off-screen, Lopez figures out Julius’ wife Heidi (Kelly Fyre) set him up. The story is meant to earn a fun husband-and-wife moment between Angela and Wesley. Except, The Rookie breezes over the fact that, since both Julius and Heidi are headed to jail, their “two toddlers” lost both parents.

That unintentional downer aside, the final bit of police business continues to show that Miles Penn (Deric Augustine) is a great addition to the show. It’s also some of the classic over-the-top, fun action nonsense The Rookie does best. After some foreshadowing when Tim warns Miles to not reveal he’s a cop on his dating profile, he lands a date that evening. Except, rather than a love connection, it’s a setup by recurring villains, the Easter Front white supremacist group. Miles escapes in a high-speed chase with armed goons. Meanwhile, Celina Juarez (Lisseth Chavez) calls Lucy. Since her officers spend their night sleeping in their vehicles nearby, the whole Mid-Wilshire “dream team” shows up to save Miles and arrest the baddies.

The Rookie Continues to Tease a Chenford Reunion Without Actually Committing to It

If Tim Gets to Ask Lucy the Question He Wanted, It’ll Be an Intense Escalation of the Romance

While this is a fun moment teasing the difficulty of Lucy’s new status quo, it does gloss over a big problem. If her subordinate officers are sleeping on-the-job, it’s something Lucy must address. While this may be a conflict arc for Lucy when The Rookie Season 8 debuts, it’s also likely the season begins with enough of a time jump that she’s whipped them into shape. The clearest indicator of this possibility is how “The Good, The Bad and The Oscar” handles The Rookie’s season-long tease of Chenford’s reunion. Lucy gets home on her second night to find Tim cooking “all [her] favorites,” though he does have an ulterior motive.

“I know the damage I did, and after a lot of therapy, I know why I did it. Look, I’ve been doing the work. I have. I’ve been doing the work to fix what’s been broken inside me. So, you can trust me when I tell you, Lucy, I will never hurt you like that again,” Tim to Lucy.

Despite clearly holding onto feelings for each other, The Rookie tempered expectations with constant reminders that Tim broke Lucy’s heart. Still, given Tim’s growth, he suggests they move in together. Of course, the scene reveals that in the last moment, Lucy fell asleep on the couch, hearing none of his proclamation. It’s a moment which made the Chenford hopefuls either laugh or fling their remotes at the wall. If there’s any consolation for those fans, The Rookie implies — given Lucy’s inability to sleep the day before — that Tim’s presence makes her feel comfortable and safe enough to slip off into dreamland.

In the “Wildfire” episode of The Rookie, Tim and Lucy declared their love for each other at a moment when both feared they might die. Even apart, Season 7 delivered some great Chenford scenes, from their holiday-based hookups to accidentally getting stoned investigating a rundown hospital. It’s a positive sign for fans, because it shows the storytellers can sustain their charm and chemistry, even when slow-walking their relationship. For better or worse, fans hoping for a Chenford wedding will almost certainly be waiting until The Rookie approaches its series finale.

Season 7 Ends With a Soft Cliffhanger Setting Up a Puzzling Dynamic for Season 8

The Return of Monica Stevens Shows The Rookie Becoming a More Patient Series

In Season 7, The Rookie paid homage to Speed in a fun episode that brought back Monica Stevens after she disappeared in the Argentinian countryside. The whole bus heist was merely a cover for Monica to steal some extremely classified intelligence. While fans suspected this was merely a continuation and escalation of her heel-turn as a criminal information broker, her plan is actually much cleverer. Special Agent Garza (Felix Solis) from the canceled The Rookie: Feds calls Nolan, Angela, Wesley and Lieutenant Wade Gray (Richard T. Jones) in for a top-secret meeting.

Again, given the past few seasons of The Rookie, fans may have expected Monica’s plot to take center stage in the Season 7 finale. In fact, since it seems Hawley and company knew about ABC’s renewal plans before Season 8 was announced, a cliffhanger ending wasn’t out of the question. Still, like Glave as Oscar, Reagan’s Monica is a truly fantastic villain wasted in any overt cops-and-crooks story. The intelligence she steals isn’t meant for terrorists or rival nations but serves as “leverage” for her to make an “immunity deal.” This means she could be a recurring thorn in the side of the Mid-Wilshire Division next year.

In fact, it’s possible Garza, Stevens and even Oscar could be involved in whatever new spinoff series The Rookie producers have in the works. Whether they knew the show was safe or not, Season 7 was a welcome return to form for the series. In fact, the way these episodes introduced new story concepts — from Harper’s police reform efforts to Celina’s new romance — without resolving them shows newfound maturity. Rather than rushing these narratives to a close as The Rookie has done in the past, the stories breathe and grow off-screen. This gives the show added depth while also rewarding regular viewers, and set the series up for success in the long run.

The Rookie Season 8 will debut in the 2025-2026 television season on ABC.

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