[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Rookie Season 6, Episode 1, “Strike Back.”]
The Rookie returns with Season 6, answering the question of Aaron Thorsen’s (Tru Valentino) fate following the previous season’s finale and reviving the chase against who is responsible. We also check in with our favorite couple, Lucy Chen (Melissa O’Neil) and Tim Bradford (Eric Winter), and the seas are rocky in their relationship.
Although he’s bleeding internally, the bullet missed his vital organs, and he survives—and returns to work to a standing ovation from the rest of the department. However, Sergeant Wade Grey (Richard T. Jones) stops him in his tracks, informing him he will not see active duty until a psychiatrist clears him.
Chen’s detective exam is coming soon, and she’s panicking, trying to prepare. Tim suggests studying for wildcards, offering to take her with him on patrol, “chasing outside the box calls, try to widen your knowledge base a little.” In the car, Chen spirals again, worried the lieutenant will trip her up with mind games, making her think he’ll ask wildcard questions when he’ll actually ask things she should be studying. However, at a crime scene, Chen screws up a wildcard scenario where a victim on a lawn with clown makeup gets wet when the sprinkler system goes off, cleaning his face and the area of evidence. Now that the crime scene is ruined, an off-duty Wesley (Shawn Ashmore) tells her that the only way to guarantee a conviction is to get a full confession from the killer — if she can find the person.
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Later, during a stakeout, she suggests to Bradford that she won’t take the exam because “I know myself; if I take this test and I fail, it will kill my confidence.” He tells her to “then wait,” to which Chen responds that she’s “just in a bad place” and he “just jumped in to amplify it.” Then, she notices a woman speeding away after looking at the murder scene and throwing something in the trash a few doors down. When they approach her and look through it, they find a gun and her bracelet she lost in the process. She then admits to killing the clown man from earlier, cinching that conviction Chen needed. But it still isn’t enough. She suggests Bradford undermined her, but he sticks to his guns, telling her all he did was have her back on her decisions. Before saying something he may regret, he says he’s tired and that they should take the night off, leaving Chen standing alone, baffled.
Meanwhile, throughout the episode, John Nolan (Nathan Fillion) has some close calls, attempting to ward off the last-shift curse in preparation for his at-home wedding. First, he almost dies in a gunfight with the perps that shot Aaron in the episode opener, followed by another altercation in a hospital, and then he almost bites it in the car when a gas tank explodes into the windshield and nearby trolly, which nearly crushes him to death. At the end of his shift, he meets up with Nyla Harper (Mekia Cox), still reeling from the execution-style shot she took to save the nurse in the hospital. As he mocks the curse, which she warned him about, she asks why he insists on tempting fate.
After Nolan and Bailey Nune (Jenna Dewan) discover they can’t have their wedding at home, Thorsen invites them to his family’s spiritual oasis downtown as thanks for saving his life. Plus, Thorsen meets his new psychiatrist, Dr. London (Danielle Campbell), and gazes at her longingly. She’s new to the job, and it looks like Thorsen is returning to work in a whole new way.
And at the end of it all, much like he disposed of his gunmen earlier in the episode, Boyd (Kristian Bruun), thought to be the mastermind behind the pro criminals they’ve been chasing, gets shot in the head on his way to prison with a possible life sentence after his lawyer Monica (Bridget Regan) makes a shady call.
The Rookie, Tuesdays, 9/8c, ABC
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
