THE ROOKIE Season 6 Finale Post-Mortem: Alexi Hawley on the Trouble to Come in Season 7, Chenford’s Important Moment, and If the Midseason Start Will Impact Storytelling

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Tuesday, May 21 season finale of THE ROOKIE.]

As the conspiracy started to unravel on the Tuesday, May 21 season finale of THE ROOKIE, Monica (Bridget Regan) decided to make a big move.

In an attempt to save herself, she handed over therapist/co-conspirator Blair (Danielle Campbell), and pitched herself as a bigger part of the organization. But Nolan (Nathan Fillion), who was monitoring the meeting with the LAPD and the feds, went rogue and crashed into the impromptu HQ to stop Blair from being sacrificed.

Ultimately, Blair was saved, but Nolan got shot for his troubles…and Monica got away.

But that wasn’t even the most dangerous thing for the good guys: long-time foe Oscar (Matthew Glave) and Bailey’s (Jenna Dewan) ex, Jason (Steve Kazee), broke out of jail…with Jason heading to LA. The season ended with Nolan being alerted about the breakout.

So what comes next? THE ROOKIE creator Alexi Hawley breaks down the season 6 finale and teases what could be ahead in season 7…

The conspiracy wasn’t entirely closed off—and certainly Monica is on the run—but a lot of the pieces were revealed. Where do things go next?
I mean, we’re early days—the room has been going for a couple of weeks at this point, because I’m just a masochist and was like, “Let’s go.” So we don’t know a lot, but I do know that ultimately, Jason is probably the most immediate threat to our people. We do have to navigate the purely practical nature of the fact that Jenna is about to have a baby in June and so I think there’ll be a bit of a slow roll on that. But when we get into the season, I don’t necessarily have clarity yet on the Oscar and the Monica of it all at this point.

When you’re dealing with the Jenna of it all, are you thinking you’ll backload her filming and slot her stuff into the episodes she can’t film? Or will Bailey be MIA for a handful of episodes next season as Jenna takes maternity leave? 
I think we’re gonna let her go have a baby and be a new mom for a bit. So we’ll work that out. You know, we always try and be as family-friendly as we can be on the show; we have a lot of experience with it at this point, having had multiple actor pregnancies on the show. Which is always our fault because we start talking about, “What if there’s a foster kid they find in the closet and they start talking about having a kid?” And then Jenna calls me and she’s like, “I’m pregnant.” I’m like, “I’m sorry. It’s our fault.” So I think at the moment, that’s where our head is at: Let’s let her tell us when she’s ready, and then we’ll navigate it.

Given the immediate stakes of that prison breakout, are you planning on picking up pretty close to the finale timeline when the show comes back? Or are you going to account for the extended hiatus and be closer to real-time when the show returns in 2025?
It won’t be extended [time jump]. I mean, we also have to deal with the fact that Nolan got shot in the finale. We need a few weeks, at least, to go by. It wasn’t ultimately a life-threatening wound, which is good; I love the little jokes at the end with Bailey. But, yeah, at this point, my thinking is it will probably be a few weeks in between [seasons] and that will keep the threat of Jason alive. But, ultimately, I’m not quite sure exactly yet, where the actual threat will happen.

Tim made the comment about how all of his deep secrets are now being investigated and poured through by the FBI. How much of what was revealed by the force, in general, is going to come into play in the upcoming season?
Yeah, that’s definitely gonna play a part at the top of the season, in terms of the impact on our station with the repercussions of the corruption scandal and finding themselves short in terms of police officers because people are having to deal with [the fallout]. And so they’ll be stretched a little thin, but then there’ll be things that happen because of that in a good way. 

I do think that some of the secrets that are out there are interesting to hang on to—and there might even be some fun to be had with it, as well; I don’t want to spoil that yet. But as we always do, we look for every tone in everything. But there will definitely be some fallout at the top of the season with what this means for the LAPD, and also what it means with some of our characters. Obviously, Harper is married to a community activist, and so he’ll be horrified by a police corruption scandal. And how does that live on a personal level?

The series has never flinched about showing the complications of policing in a modern world. How will this very public corruption scandal be received by the larger Los Angeles community?
Um, I think it’s early days on that. I do think the way we can personalize it is through James and Harper. He runs the community center in LA, so we will be able to see it. I do think wherever we can make it more personal versus just having a bunch of…yes, that’s always our goal: How do we make it feel more immediate versus something that you might see on TV [news], but doesn’t really connect? But again, early days, I’m not sure exactly.

As much as the therapy ended up leading to some trouble, Aaron and Tim did actually need this help this season. How much are they going to be actively trying to better their mental health next season and what has this experience done to their ability to open up?
We’ve been talking about therapy since the very beginning of the show in terms of a necessary tool to help people get through things. So I think it’d be bad for us to suddenly have Tim go, “All therapists are psychopaths.” So what is his takeaway from that? And what are the repercussions on our characters in terms of how they navigate that? All I can say at this point is that we won’t shut that door based on Blair. But how can we tell a new version of a story about [therapy] is basically what we’re talking about now in the [writers’] room, rather than going back to potentially somebody sitting across from somebody on nice furniture.

After this conspiracy touching so many avenues of their life, how will their trust levels with new people be impacted next season?
I think we’re going to try and come in with a sense that we know that there aren’t that many unknowns out there in terms of [the conspiracy]…we do want to wrap it up, to a certain extent. We do want to feel like we’ve cauterized the wound, and now we’ll see what the fallout is. So I don’t know that we’re gonna be running around paranoid in the same way that we kind of were at the end of the season.

That makes sense. We briefly discussed the Chenford of it all pre-episode, and the finale found her saving his life—and him thanking her and making it clear he wants to make things up to her in whatever way she’ll allow. What does them being apart right now bring to THE ROOKIE writers? And what are you hoping to show in their story next season?
[Joking.] That’s a lot of big questions. [Seriously.] Look, I think what I can say is that as painful as what they went through this season was, I feel like, for us, there was some important storytelling going on. That Tim’s journey and Lucy’s journey through it…I’ve said it before, but I think that, ultimately, it was super important for us not to feel like Lucy was ever a victim in this. That she had agency in her own response. And [we see] that by the podcar episode, where she was complaining to Gray, “He doesn’t get to just do that. Like, if I want to choose self-destruction. It’s my choice,” and all that. 

But then ultimately getting to a point where she can say, “I’m still mad at you,” but give him a hug because she knows [he needs it]. I thought it was really beautiful. As was the last scene in the elevator in the finale, which is one of my favorite moments in the whole season. And just to get to a place, especially at a time where in pop culture, breakups are always like, “F— you, f— you, you’re the worst person in the world, and I hate you and your friends, except for your dog,” and all that kind of stuff. To get to a place where Tim could really see that she treated him with kindness and for her to have done that, even though she was furious at him and even though he broke her heart and all that, just felt like there was real humanity there that I felt like does advance their relationship, that does advance their storylines, that does deepen their characters in a way. As much as the happy life of it all is fulfilling…it’s just ultimately for me, that the dynamism of that storyline is ultimately really impactful. And, in theory, the highs are higher because of it.

Without making you commit to anything right now when you’re this early in the crafting of season 7, are you looking at them as a will they/won’t they, in terms of they may be seeing other people? Or are they on a path to reconciliation in your mind?
I can’t commit to anything. [Laughs.] I will say that I think that that last scene in the elevator, especially, there’s hope there. And I do think that what I never want to do is get to a place where their storyline is a bummer. I think the dynamism and the fun of them has always been the chemistry and the push and the pull. So we definitely want to come into season 7 with that energy, no matter where we are on the romantic side of it; we do want to come back [to that] and I think that we’ve created enough space where we can come back in and enjoy being on that ride with them again, even if there’s obviously bumps and spills along the way.

Another relationship thing was Bailey and Nolan discussed adoption. Putting aside the Jason of it all, what might that adoption path look like? 
Ultimately, Jason is obviously a huge obstacle on that ride. It was very important to us, and important to me, personally, who has an adopted child, to really champion that as a path. It’s the reason ultimately that when Jenna called and said, “I’m pregnant,” for the first time in the show, we didn’t embrace it and just go, “Okay, Bailey’s pregnant on the show,” because we’d already started crafting the storyline about this little girl they found in the closet. Even though they decided they weren’t going to have kids now, they start to change their mind. But then there’s obstacles which millions and millions of people in the world can identify with, in terms of fertility and whether they’re going to go down the path of IVF, which, sadly, is a topic of controversy in multiple states across the country. Then whether they could handle that and then embracing the idea of adoption and going down that road. I can’t necessarily say at this point where it’ll all land, but it’s part of what we always try and do: Talk about stuff that people can identify with in this universal way because it’s connected to our characters that they can embrace. And, look, good stuff happens all the time; bad stuff happens all the time. So where we’re going to land on that, I don’t know yet. But it feels like let’s go down the road and see what’s right for our characters.

The series is being held for midseason, which could change previous air patterns—you’re less likely to have long hiatuses. (And may actually run straight through.) How is that impacting how you’re crafting season 7?
I had already come into the season [thinking about that] because season 6 became our most serialized season; it really was just because we’re doing 10 episodes. So it feels like that’s an opportunity.

Every season, I feel like we look at the season and go, “What do we want to do this year? How do we want to do it differently?” Because I never want to come in and just hit copy on the machine, so to speak. So, before we heard the schedule, I was already going, “I think we should be a little more standalone this season. Let’s look at journeys within episodes.” 

Which doesn’t mean we won’t carry journeys through; we always do. But less of a serialized story and more of what are we doing this week and what obstacle is Nolan walking in with today? How are we telling that story? And then, obviously, there will be threads that we pull through—but that was my thought already, which I think lends itself to [our season 7 schedule]. Which doesn’t mean we won’t build stuff up and do sort of mini arcs and cliffhangers and stuff like that. But I think at this point, probably, what we’re looking at is fairly, as you said, we’re [likely] just on every week, which I love. Let’s do that! I think the fans would love that as much as they hate the idea that we’re not on in late September. I think they’ll appreciate that once we go, we’re going. So that’s my hope, anyway.

THE ROOKIE, Tuesdays, 9/8c, ABC

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