THE ROOKIE Post-Mortem: Alexi Hawley on the Chenford Cliffhanger, Season 8 Villains, and More - Give Me My Remote : Give Me My Remote

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THE ROOKIE Post-Mortem: Alexi Hawley on the Chenford Cliffhanger, Season 8 Villains, and More

May 13, 2025 by  

The Rookie Chenford cliffhanger

THE ROOKIE – “The Good, The Bad, And The Oscar” – John and Harper work together to catch Oscar; Angela investigates a bank robbery; Lucy and Tim learn to adapt to her new schedule, and Miles’ first date takes an unexpected turn. TUESDAY, MAY 13 (9:00-10:01 p.m. EDT) on ABC. (Disney/Mike Taing)
ERIC WINTER, MELISSA O’NEIL

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Tuesday, May 13 season finale of THE ROOKIE.]

THE ROOKIE team got a double blow in the season 7 finale, courtesy of Oscar (Matthew Glave) and Monica (Bridget Regan).

With Nolan (Nathan Fillion) tracking Oscar, he was blindsided when the con man tased him and dragged him along to try and track down buried treasure. Harper (Mekia Cox), who was with Nolan, discovered her partner was missing and asked a drone-utilizing kid at the motel for help tracking down Oscar and Nolan. When they found the duo, Harper asked the kid to use the drone to hit Oscar, who had a gun on Nolan. He was successful, and Nolan managed to fight back. But Oscar had a helicopter nearby and was able to escape.

Then, Nolan, Grey (Richard T. Jones), Lopez (Alyssa Diaz), and Wesley (Shawn Ashmore) got a call from FBI agent Garza (Felix Solis) to meet him.

“The decision was made at the top of the food chain,” Garza tried to warn them, as the group braced for bad news. As it turned out, someone had leveraged “beyond top secret” information against the government was leveraged for an immunity deal.

Monica smugly walked out. “Miss me?” she asked, as she left free and clear.

But the hour also included an emotional cliffhanger for Tim (Eric Winter) and Lucy (Melissa O’Neil).

Though the duo had used work as an excuse for why they weren’t together, now that Lucy was promoted, Lucy admitted to Celina (Lisseth Chavez), “There were a lot of other problems. We still need to have a serious conversation before anything more can happen.”

Tim, for his part, told Angela he was hesitant to pressure Lucy. “I’m trying to be respectful of the fact that I’m the one who broke her heart.” 

But Tim made a big gesture when he came to her place after a hard shift, cooking all of her favorite foods. He encouraged Lucy to relax, and started his own speech for her.

“I just want you to know I would never assume anything about our future,” he said. “I know the damage I did. And after a lot of therapy, I know why I did it. I’ve been doing the work; I have. I’ve been doing the work to fix what’s been broken inside of me. 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…” But he cut himself off when he realized she was asleep.

Instead, he covered her up and kissed her on the head. “To be continued,” he told her sleeping form.

So what comes next when the show returns in 2026? Creator Alexi Hawley shares a little bit of intel with Give Me My Remote…

We’ve got a number of cliffhangers in the finale. From what you know so far, are you going to be picking up where we left off or will there be a time jump?
I think it’ll be a fairly quick pickup. I don’t think it’s immediate, but I think given the threads that are still out—I mean, I think ultimately…I know you’ll get to this, but I think with Lucy and Tim, what they’re in desperate need of is that conversation to happen. And so I think we can’t leave [it]. We can’t go away too long, and that’s happened in the past; that’s unsatisfying. So, yeah, I think we’ll come back…within a few days or weeks, or whatever. 

To jump to the Tim and Lucy of it all, Tim had the emotional confession to Lucy while she was asleep. What can you share about the decision to have him wanting to jump straight to moving in versus asking to give them another chance? And why was it important for you to have him say that when she was not conscious?
[Laughs.] Look, I mean, ultimately, it felt like, given the journey that we’ve been on with them, that just going back to the way it was, in theory, with just them dating again, it just didn’t feel like enough. It felt like that if they were really going to try again, that it needed a sort of bigger commitment. 

I think that, ultimately, we have proven by the end of the season how the love affair between them is super strong and has weathered a lot. I felt strongly that the obstacles they had to overcome were real, and we couldn’t just put them back together in three episodes. Like, he needed to do the work. She needed to ultimately go through the process of forgiving him and prioritizing her life and all that kind of stuff. 

I think, ultimately, the fire that they’ve been through has sort of earned them a next level conversation. And so I think going into the top of season 8, it’ll be is that the next step? And a little bit the fear of, what if it’s not as good as it was before? But that’s something that the only way you can test that is to test that. So.

They’ve had a lot of near-misses with communication—the drugging, this cliffhanger, or even not looking at each other and misreading important emotional moments. Can you confirm, concretely, that they will have a face-to-face, sober, conversation next season?
I think if we’ve established anything with the two of them, it’s that healthy communication is something that they struggle with a bit. And so there are moments of great connection between them, clearly. But I think we definitely need to see the conversation. That’s partially why I say we’re not going to do a big time jump—I think the audience has earned the conversation. I think the characters have earned the conversation. 

I think, ultimately, that conversation is going to be about what they’ve been through and their sort of fears about the future. But I think it’s pretty clear that we’ve turned a corner, and they’re meant to be together. So, yeah.

For the show as a whole, Monica is out there now. What can you share about how this will be different now that she is free and clear, it seems, versus being out there and causing trouble from afar?
It’s enraging to our characters, right? We obviously started with her and Wesley and Lopez as being the primary [targets], but that’s grown in leaps and bounds. Obviously, Nolan got shot because of her and all that kind of thing. 

So I think there are definitely people who want to see her behind bars. And now she’s managed to escape that and gotten immunity. The room just started [working on season 8]…so obviously it’s very early days. But I think the trick is going to be, is there some part of the immunity deal that gives us active storytelling versus just she’s now clear and now she’s just around as a foil? So that’s the obstacle for season 8: What can we do with her that feels necessary and dynamic?

Oscar is still out there, too. What can you share about your plans for him?
I love Oscar a lot. You know, I’ve said it before, but Matthew, who plays him, is such a brilliant actor. And it’s one of those cases—that we’ve been lucky enough to have happen time and time again—which is, you write a character that is in your head, probably just a one-off, and then you hire an actor and you’re like, “I want to spend more time with them, for sure.” 

Chastity is that character…and there are multiple characters along the way where you’re just like, they just sparkle. And so Oscar, and Matthew Glave, is definitely one of those. 

The challenge is always, how do you keep them in the storytelling in a way that feels organic? And so we can’t have Oscar getting away over and over again. So, yeah, going into season 8, it’s like, what’s a satisfying way to potentially end that chapter? And then, I mean, look, I don’t know that there’s more story to tell beyond that. You’ve got to figure it out. 

We’ve struggled a little bit. We love other characters—Elijah (Brandon Jay McLaren) is another character that we love, that we have yet to figure out a way to bring him back into our storytelling that feels good and not a little bit cheap. So, yeah, I think going into season 8, it’s always the balance of, “We love this character, but is there fresh story to tell?”

The DA race felt like it was something that was left open last week. How are you planning to play with that next season, and what might that mean for Wesley, as well as Wesley and Angela’s relationship? 
Yeah, that’s a good question. We definitely have been thinking and starting to talk about that. 

I think it’s fair to say that Wesley joined the DA’s office, after being a defense attorney, in large part because he thought he could make a difference to fighting injustice in the justice system. That being said, I do think he’s come up against the reality that if you just work there, as opposed to being the boss, you can only affect things at the margins. 

So we’re gonna kick the tires on that idea of him considering, “Is there more things I can do if I was the boss?” The question is, what would that do to a relationship? And, you know, putting yourself in the spotlight like that. It can be problematic when you have a history like Wesley has, where Elijah [is a] part of that. So maybe that’s an organic way to bring Elijah back. I don’t know. We might have been talking about it!

Looking to season 8, what are you most excited to explore at this point?
I don’t know that I have any one specific thing because, again, it’s early days. 

What I love about the show is that every season does feel unique and different. Part of it has just been the world: There was a pandemic, there was a strike, George Floyd got murdered. A lot of stuff that we’ve had to sort of negotiate and try and embrace in our storytelling, and it’s affected every season in small and large ways. 

Rolling into season 8, I just never want to rest on our laurels. And I think that part of it is that we have such a brilliant cast. And, literally, anytime we put two characters that don’t spend a lot of time together in a patrol car together, that’s a different episode. Like, those relationships are always fluid. And so, yeah, that’s what’s exciting to me: Rolling into the room and going, “Okay, either what haven’t we done before, and what can we do? Or what are some things that have fallen; either ways we’ve told story or character or relationships that have kind of fallen by the wayside over the many seasons we’ve been on the air? And how do we embrace those and maybe bring them back or twist them? What’s the new things we can do, and what are the old things that maybe we can revisit?” So all those add up to, again, the season just feeling different than the last one.

THE ROOKIE, Tuesdays, ABC

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