‘The Rookie’ Bosses Teases Chenford Revelations, Talks [Spoiler]’s Death

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Rookie Season 7 Episode 14 “Mad About Murder.”]

The Rookie has taken quite a few hitmen off the table by the end of the latest episode, including one with a connection to a couple main characters.

It all begins when Tim (Eric Winter) is surprised when a guy shows up at his door talking about a hitman for hire. That leads the LAPD to a website and a list of targets in Los Angeles to warn. But then, to their surprise, the hitmen start turning up dead after the site is hacked, and (on body cam footage) they witness an assassin they know, Malvado (Jimmy Gonzales), whom Bailey (Jenna Dewan) had turned to when her abusive ex-husband was after her, killing one. When Nolan (Nathan Fillion) tells her, Bailey worries that if the LAPD catches him, he can use that as leverage.

The LAPD catches up to Malvado when he’s going after the last loose end (the person who hired him), and during the ensuing fight with Nolan and Tim, Angela (Alyssa Diaz) must shoot him. So why kill off Malvado? Was it just to eliminate that concern for Bailey and Nolan?

“To be honest, for me, the Malvado storyline really was there to show the trauma that Bailey had been through,” executive producer Alexi Hawley tells TV Insider. “It was really an emotional storyline for her about with Jason’s escape and him coming for her and having her have to face some things that she actually hadn’t admitted to herself about what Jason had put her through. And Malvado being sort of this sort of primal fear-based action that she took and the impact that that had on her storyline and her relationship with Nolan was the thing that was the most interesting about that to me. We purposely tried to keep what she revealed to Malvado as being ultimately just peripheral. He did find Jason on his own and all that kind of stuff.”

He continues, “So that being said, yes, I think at the end of the day, the spark of fear that comes from him being back around again was important. But honestly for me, the story really just was about Bailey and Nolan for the most part.”

Elsewhere in the episode, Angela pushes Tim to spill about him and Lucy (Melissa O’Neil) during a late night working. “I don’t know” what’s going on, he shares. “She’s taking the sergeant’s exam.” As Angela notes, then the two of them can get back together. “No, it’s a good move for her career,” says Tim, but he admits, “It’s come up.” Angela offers him advice: Lucy is the best thing to happen to him and if he wins her back after what he put her through, he better say a prayer of gratitude every night before bed. This comes after the exes hooked up on Valentine’s Day, then April Fools’ Day.

“I didn’t want to make it easy, partly because I felt like what Tim had done to her, the way he broke up with her, the way he punished himself by punishing her was fairly seismic. And I felt like it would be a disservice to the characters if we just had a couple of episodes of penalty box and then they were back together,” says Hawley of what he’s been doing with Chenford.

“So I thought it was really important this season to dig into the real effects that it had on her, him doing some work because clearly what he did was not emotionally healthy, and then also just treat them as real flawed human beings who have a hookup, even though it’s probably not the smartest thing for their relationship, and then find distance again, and then have Lucy sort of make some choices that are emotionally complicated for her,” he adds. “So all that said, I do think at their heart that there is an undeniable connection between the two of them, and part of it is just them sort of finding their way back towards each other whenever that happens..”

As for what feels like a build to an inevitable reunion, “Episode 15 has a few unexpected revelations as part of our true crime documentary episode, some things said that a camera caught that maybe they weren’t supposed to, which I think is fun,” the EP teases.

The Rookie, Tuesdays, 9/8c, ABC