THE ROOKIE Post-Mortem: Alexi Hawley and Terence Paul Winter on the Rosalind Dyer Twist and Fallout on THE ROOKIE: FEDS

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Sunday, October 16 episode of THE ROOKIE, “The Choice.”]

After spending the past few years tormenting the LAPD, Rosalind Dyer (Annie Wersching) was killed on the Sunday, October 16 hour of THE ROOKIE—but not exactly how she planned.

Rosalind, who escaped and went on the run in the season premiere, worked with another unknown partner to have Nolan’s (Nathan Fillion) girlfriend, Bailey (Jenna Dewan), become ensnared in a booby-trapped pit thanks to a fake 911 call. With virtually no safe way to get her out, Rosalind called Nolan told him the only way to save her was for the duo to meet—alone.

Once the foes reunited, Nolan questioned why Rosalind went through all of this trouble…after all, she escaped. Rosalind explained she couldn’t live freely anymore, so she had a proposition: If Nolan killed her, her unknown partner would make sure Bailey was released, safely.

Ultimately, Nolan was unable to pull the trigger and Bailey was saved. And while it initially looked like Rosalind was headed back to prison, an unknown sniper took her out.

As the cops gathered to provide backup for Nolan, they all took a beat to acknowledge the magnitude of Rosalind’s torture finally coming to an end.

“Obviously people are gonna feel relieved that she’s not still a force out there,” THE ROOKIE boss Alexi Hawley tells Give Me My Remote. “Given the [last] four seasons, we sort of played her, even when she’s incarcerated, as a dangerous foe.”

“That moment with Lucy at the end of [‘The Choice‘] was really powerful,” he continues. “This sort of, ‘I can’t believe she’s gone.’ And Tim talking about how she only seemed larger than life, because I do think that we all mythologize characters like this. There’ll be a lasting impact on everybody.”

More immediately, as Tim (Eric Winter) pointed out, with Rosalind dead, that meant they could turn their focus on identifying and finding her accomplice before anyone else was hurt. “Here comes the feds to help,” Grey (Richard T. Jones) said, referring to THE ROOKIE: FEDS characters.

Though Rosalind has been a character exclusively on THE ROOKIE, FEDS’ Matthew Garza (Felix Solis) and Laura Stensen (Britt Robertson) had popped over to give insight into her case the previous week, and Brendon Acres (Kevin Zegers) and Laura appeared in “The Choice” to share what they had found out about her accomplice. Given the nature of the crimes, using Rosalind—and her mysterious helper—as a launching point for the franchise’s first official crossover this season “felt natural,” Hawley notes.

“Serial killers are famously very much an FBI case—they bring feds in on that side, so felt like a real opportunity,” he says. “So as we targeted episode 4s [of both shows] as where we were going to do it, then it became a question of how to proceed and whether they should be all up in each other’s episodes or whether it was more of a handoff. We did a little bit of a hybrid where we had Brandon and Laura show up in in 5×04, and then just hand it off. And then Tim shows up in 1×04.”

With very little known about the man who helped Rosalind with her last plan, the FEDS team has their work cut out for them with the Tuesday, October 18 episode, “To Die For.”

“This character is a very different animal than Rosalind,” Hawley, who also co-runs THE ROOKIE: FEDS, previews. “We really jumped into the deep end, trying to find who this person is. The joy of FEDS is as a national law enforcement organization, they can go anywhere. So we do take advantage of this idea—we’re not tied to Los Angeles in the hunt for our serial killer.”

The varying backgrounds of the FEDS team is also allowing the writers to play with a different approach in this new hunt. “Because we have this wonderful character, Laura, who is a proper FBI profiler, to have that perspective being part of the hunt sort of adds to the mystery,” THE ROOKIE: FEDS co-showrunner Terence Paul Winter teases. “[She’s] putting the pieces together, trying to figure out what would make this person do what he does, and how can that help us locate them [to] stop him from doing all these awful things. So that’s a wonderful new dynamic that we’re able to add to the universe of THE ROOKIE.”

As the FEDS team goes all out in “To Die For,” they’ll have a bit of help from a blast from Laura’s past.

“Mark Atlas, played by the brilliant Deniz Akdeniz, joins us for this episode,” Winter previews. “They were former partners back in DC, part of the BAU. And they worked hip-to-hip, shoulder-to-shoulder, for years. They really were tight. There’s an interesting relationship there, because when Laura ‘flamed out’ of her time there, and was pushed out of the BAU, she felt shame. So, she didn’t even say goodbye to Mark Atlas, who was not just her partner, but also her best friend. There’s some old wounds that need to be dealt with, and scars that need to be addressed, and actually leads us to an interesting development in their relationship.”

THE ROOKIE, Sundays, 10/9c, ABC

THE ROOKIE: FEDS, Tuesdays, 10/9c, ABC

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