The Rookie Boss Unpacks the Season 7 Finale, Including the Chenford Cliffhanger

[Warning: This story contains spoilers for The Rookie Season 7 finale, "The Good, the Bad, and the Oscar." Read at your own risk!]

The Rookie sure loves a season-ending cliffhanger. For this year's finale of the ABC police procedural, creator and showrunner Alexi Hawley decided to leave a couple loose threads — one personal, one professional — that will surely leave some viewers cursing at their television.

Following the events of the penultimate episode, which revealed that Lucy (Melissa O'Neil) had finally gotten a promotion, Tuesday's finale begins with the newly minted LAPD sergeant working the dreaded night shift with a group of officers known as the "Dream Team" (mostly because they would spend the shift sleeping in their parked cruisers). The change in Lucy's schedule made it nearly impossible for her to catch up with her ex-boyfriend Tim (Eric Winter), who, after having broken her heart last season, was clearly hoping that they could have a real conversation about getting back together after a series of many-strings-attached hook-ups.

During a shift change, the two exes make a plan to spend time together on Lucy's day off, but Tim surprises her one morning in her own kitchen with a spread of her favorite comfort foods — pancakes, chocolate croissants, veggie burgers, oven-baked sea bass. As Lucy kicks her feet up on her couch after a long shift, Tim begins to gently force the issue.

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"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," Tim says. "So you can trust me when I tell you: Lucy, I will never hurt you like that again. If we're going to get back together, I think we should take the next step — and you should move in with me, so we can give us … a real shot." (Lucy fell asleep at some point during that speech, but Tim kisses her head and clearly says the conversation is "to be continued.")

Meanwhile, Nolan (Nathan Fillion) comes face-to-face again with recurring villain Oscar Hutchinson (Matthew Glave), who escaped prison at the end of last season with Nolan's wife Bailey's (Jenna Dewan) now-deceased ex-husband Jason (Steve Kazee). In the '90s, Oscar was part of a crew that stole $10 million worth of diamonds from a jewelry store in Las Vegas, and one of his co-conspirators hid the diamonds before the police could recover them. With Oscar now planning to kill both of his accomplices in order to keep all the diamonds for himself, Grey (Richard T. Jones) gives Nolan a 48-hour assignment with Harper (Mekia Cox) to stake out Oscar at a motel near Las Vegas.

The plan, however, quickly goes awry overnight when Oscar catches Nolan at a vending machine, knocks him out cold, and then kidnaps him. Nolan wakes up tied up and disoriented in the trunk of Oscar's car on the way to uncovering the diamonds' secret location in the desert. In order to save Nolan, Harper teams up with a kid with a camera drone who was staying at the same motel. Just as Oscar is about to shoot Nolan, the kid hits Oscar with the drone. Nolan and Oscar get into a tussle and are both able to escape with their lives, but Nolan maintains possession of the recovered diamonds.

The next day, Nolan, Grey, Lopez (Alyssa Diaz), and Wesley (Shawn Ashmore) are all called to a meeting at Homeland Security, where FBI agent Garza (Felix Solis) reveals that top-secret intelligence stolen from the NSA forced the U.S. government to make an immunity deal with Monica Stevens (Bridget Regan) — the corrupt lawyer (and Wesley's former fiancé) who previously helped Oscar and Jason escape.

Below, Hawley breaks down how we arrived at that "Chenford" cliffhanger (and why fans shouldn't give up hope on them getting back together), why we haven't seen the last of the two rookies he introduced at the top of this season, and how he is approaching the writing of next season.

How did you think about developing "Chenford" over the course of this 18-episode season? Is there a reason they haven't been able to have an honest conversation about where they stand right now?

Alexi Hawley: I believe we talked before about [how] the damage done was fairly seismic, and it felt like there needed to be a real journey for them to get back [together] — both him needing to do the work to understand why he blew up the best thing that ever happened to him, [which was] to punish himself, and her dealing with the pain of that [break-up], and then also wanting to focus on her career moving forward and ultimately trusting him again. So it felt like we needed to earn that. We had moments along the way where they moved towards each other, and then they moved away a little bit. I do think that having conversations is not necessarily their strong point as a couple. It's obviously exacerbated by the drama between them, so I think all of that is a part of the answer.

What was the logic behind using the truth serum in Episode 15 to initiate Tim explaining his reasoning for the breakup to Lucy as opposed to showing Tim's growth due to therapy? Why did you wait until so late in the season to start addressing the elephant in the room between the two of them?

Hawley: I think we touched on it in several earlier episodes. Obviously, he had gone to [criminally indicted therapist] Blair, which turned out to be a mistake. We did establish that he was going to this veterans' support group early in the season to also work on himself, and I do think he had said to her before that he had punished himself by punishing her. It did feel like we had milestones along the way. What I loved about that scene [where Lucy and Tim have an honest conversation while drugged] was just the unexpectedness of it — a couple that's not always good communicators being forced to be truthful. I loved Melissa's discovery of "I've already forgiven you" — she landed that so brilliantly — so it was a fun way to do it.

One of the milestones that you haven't really touched on in past interviews was the April Fools' Day episode, in which Lucy and Tim attempt to trick their co-workers into thinking they are an item again — but in reality, they just used that day as an excuse to hook up again with no strings attached. Those choices felt like they came out of left field to me, as a longtime viewer of the show. In your eyes, why did Lucy choose to initiate the hook-up, knowing that they hadn't yet discussed the personal state of their relationship?

Hawley: Look, I think that it's ultimately [about] the humanness of having selfish moments. We've all been through breakups, and many have fallen back into bed with an ex and realized it was a bad move or it was not necessarily the most healthy step to make. So I think, honestly, where it came from is that they had obviously fallen into bed together at the end of the gala and dealt with the fallout from that, and then they had been growing closer and working on stuff, but it just felt like it was a moment of selfishness that they both wanted. People are messy.

Tim has spent so much of this season trying to let Lucy dictate how she would like their relationship to evolve after their break-up, so why did you choose to have Tim initiate the start of that conversation — instead of Lucy — at the end of the finale?

Hawley: I wanted to make sure that he was respectful of the fact that he was the one who did the damage. Obviously, we've been telling that story for a little while now. There was a moment [in the Season 6 finale] where he thanked her for the kindness that she showed him even [after] he broke her heart, and that he would spend the rest of his life making it up to her in whatever small ways she allowed. So it felt very important to have him conscious of trying to do right by her. I like that, ultimately, Lopez was the one who both understood that and said, "Don't go overboard with that. She needs to also know that you want this. You need to push, or you might lose her." So it felt important that he just needed to get checked on not overcompensating for trying to do right by her, and he just needed to tell her how he felt.

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Lucy falls asleep just as Tim tells her that he thinks they should move in together. Part of me was waiting to see if Lucy was pretending to fall asleep; if she had heard more than she was letting on. Is it fair to say that they are on the precipice of that long-awaited conversation of getting back together?

Hawley: I think we're almost there, to cut to the end of the race, so to speak. I think ultimately, we're not trying to set up some sort of [situation where] he had a shot and he missed it, and now it's all going to be doom and gloom. The things that amuse me don't necessarily amuse everybody, but it felt organic [to have Lucy fall asleep] given how exhausted she was. I do think that they've been working their way back to each other. They've definitely turned a corner, and the professional obstacles are out of the way. I think they still need to have the talk, the conversation. I don't want to rob them of that, but I think we're almost there.

Will Lucy continue to be working night shifts at the start of Season 8, or will she be back to working day shifts with Tim and the rest of her regular team?

Hawley: I don't think that there's a lot more to get out of the obstacle of the night shift. It was definitely a fun little twist. Look, the moment at the end of [Episode] 17 where she can't look at that list [of officers who passed the sergeant's exam] really broke my heart in such a good way. That moment of her being vulnerable and asking Tim to look for her and just his kindness — that moment, to me, is what makes them special. And obviously, you gotta twist it. The twist of the night shift was just something you feel like you got to do, but I think that obstacle should be short-lived.

One of the most pleasant surprises of this season was how much I came to love Miles (Deric Augustine). He came in with a big chip on his shoulder, but he has been humbled and actually became a better cop under the tutelage of Tim — and to some extent, Grey. What did you want to accomplish with his arc this season, and how have the events of his LAPD rookie year changed him as a character?

Hawley: It's always tricky when you're introducing these new rookies because you don't want to bring on a version of a character you already have. And how does [the new character] sort of exfoliate their training officer? Because that relationship is super important to the show. The way in with Miles was that he was a rookie who's already been a cop [in Texas], who has to then come in and learn how L.A. does it versus somewhere else. We have a writer, Fredrick Kotto, who was a police officer for 18 years in California, and he talks very much about the fact that this country is full of thousands of police departments and they all do things differently. There is no uniformity to it, which is shocking. So that line about having to untrain [Miles] and retrain him is very true, and it would be true in reverse. If Tim went to Texas, they would feel like he does not do things the right way.

So it was fun to have a character come in who wasn't scared of Tim, who was cocky, who thought he knew how to do the job, and then was really shaken by the fact that he did stuff wrong. Revealing that he was living in his car at the end of the [first] episode was also a really powerful part of his character, of what he had gone through. I think Miles' journey was really a joy [to write] — and Deric is such a good actor — and to explore what he lost from football. His high-school girlfriend storyline was really emotional. I think that ultimately, the Seth [played by Patrick Keleher] betrayal was also a big thing. They were buddies at the academy. [Miles] believed this guy; he trusted this guy. I wish we had a little bit more time in the season to explore that betrayal on Miles' side. Ultimately, with this many stories and characters, it's sometimes a little hard, but I think there's still room to potentially explore that next season a bit. We'll see.

You mentioned that Miles felt betrayed by Seth's litany of lies. The last time we saw Seth, he was recovering in the hospital after being shot in the leg and having part of his leg amputated — and he was finally beginning to come clean about all the mistruths he had told since joining the LAPD. Will we see Seth again next season? Have we seen the conclusion of his story?

Hawley: I don't think it's the end. Again, it's early days. We started the [writers] room [last Monday], but I would like to see him again. Patrick also was a joy to find as an actor. His ability to be incredibly likable at the beginning — this sort of Boy Scout — and the micro-adjustments he made to make this character somebody who audiences truly did not like was a real talent. But I also think that the challenge is, can you redeem a character like that? I think that's interesting. I think ultimately — and Nolan says it in the scene — it's not necessarily the end of his career in the Los Angeles Police Department. I think if you can pass the physical tests that anybody else passes, even with a prosthetic, then you can become a police officer. So I think that there's still a story to tell there.

Oscar and Monica were looming threats for the entire season, and you decided to bring both of them back into the fold in this explosive finale. What threats will they continue to pose to the Mid-Wilshire Division next season, particularly after Oscar kidnapped Nolan and then got away again?

Hawley: On the Oscar front, obviously he escaped at the end of last season with Jason. Telling the Jason story felt more primal just because of the [immediate] threat to our guys, so that's why we leaned in there [this season]. Oscar is just a really fun nemesis, and I don't think we can keep going to the well of him getting away. So that's something that we're trying to navigate, and going into Season 8 is, "What's the next chapter of that story?" I think with Monica, [there's] the fun of her getting immunity under our noses. We have such antipathy towards her, we have such hatred for her, and now she can go free. It's provocative in a good way for our characters and for our storytelling in Season 8, so we will have to see where it goes, but that seemed like a pretty good next step.

Bridget, to her credit, plays a fantastic villain. But for some ABC fans, having her back on the screen so soon after what her character did to Capt. Bobby Nash on 9-1-1 will be a particularly bitter pill to swallow.

Hawley: Look, I didn't realize she was on 9-1-1 until very recently. [He finally realizes in the moment why people might not want to see Bridget.] Okay, yeah. [Laughs.] So we'll see what happens.

There were a bunch of other characters who got their due in this season — and some who, unfortunately, fell a little by the wayside. Let's start with some characters who did have some compelling episodes this season: Harper and Celina (Lisseth Chavez). How did you think about developing their arcs this season?

Hawley: Harper, especially this season, got put through the wringer emotionally. We definitely try to keep the conversations about injustice and the justice system alive, and it's very personified by Harper's relationship with James [Arjay Smith] — him as a community activist and her as a police officer who have very different views of policing. So that was the beginning of some relationship struggles with them that [led to] him getting shot. It was obviously very dynamic.

It was a big season for Celina too. She graduated from the program and got to be a cop outside of being a rookie. She started a relationship and had moved in with Lucy, and even her relationship with Miles is a joy. We really just try and keep everybody moving because the show is a character-driven show. The cases are all there to serve character. We don't even think [like], "The A-story is [about] the case." The A-story is like, "Nolan's going through X, and therefore what cases can we invent that thematically help tell that story?"

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We've seen Wesley and Lopez hard at work for the last couple of seasons, but we haven't necessarily seen much of them at home, even though they just welcomed their second child not too long ago. Is there a reason that "Wopez" hasn't had a personal storyline for the last two seasons, and how are you looking to rectify that next season?

Hawley: To be transparent, we have a lot of characters we love who are a joy to write for — who can do anything tonally, emotionally, whatever. From season to season, things sometimes have an ebb and a flow. I think Harper and her personal life took more of a front seat this season in a very dynamic way. I definitely think in Season 8, the pendulum will swing a little bit — not necessarily [to say] that we won't give Harper anything, but just in terms of [giving "Wopez" more]. I love them together and I love to see both their home life and also the obstacles that we can deal with for the two of them, so I think it's safe to say we won't leave the audience disappointed next season with them.

You mentioned that it's still early days in the writers' room for Season 8, but how would you describe your approach to next season? Has it changed at all from season-to-season? Are there any particular dynamics that you are keen to explore that you weren't able to deepen in past seasons?

Hawley: Every season to me has felt different. Some of it is honestly [due to] the world. We had a strike season, we had a pandemic season, and we had to deal with how to be a cop show after the death of George Floyd. Every season has had its individual obstacles, but also opportunities. I think we also have the joy on this show of anytime we put two different characters in the police car together, it's a different dynamic. So obviously, introducing Miles and Seth and making Lucy a training officer this season [was important]. There's a lot of different things that we added in Season 7 which were new to the show, so what we're trying to figure out [right now] is, what are the new iterations of character dynamics?

We are a show with stakes. We are a show where bad things happen and have happened since the very beginning. So, for us, I think that it makes the audience lean forward in a way because there's always people online going, "Don't you dare kill … whoever!" Honestly, it makes you worried [when a character is in danger]. It's very hard on television. I mean, you know having gone through the 9-1-1 stuff recently that fans are very passionate about the shows they love — of course they are. But anyway, keeping stakes on the show, switching things up, and having some fun is important. Even getting Tim and Lopez back together a little bit more this season than we had last season was a joy. It's not that you forget those dynamics, but we have so many great different relationships that you're like, "Oh, let's lean in on that foot a little bit more this season."

The Rookie will return with Season 8 in 2026. All episodes are now streaming on Hulu.