He’s definitely going to need to go above and beyond in our return episode to overcome the deck that’s stacked against him. I do think that that is a valid point of, “Why would I do that?” At the same time, if you have a criminal organization saying that you’re working with them, it’s going to be hard to overcome that. It will look bad for him, and that’s the obstacle we have to overcome: How is he going to get out of this? But he did spend time with Harper trying to get Armstrong, so there are going to be conflicting conversations. TVLINE | Now as Matt Mitovich, Investigator, if I saw how Nolan had bashed up his own walls, I’d wonder: Why would he do that if he knew where his secret stash was?
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TVLINE | In the event of renewal, are you coming back continuous with the cops barging in on Nolan at home? But the mano a mano of it all made it in some ways simpler for him. And he might still need to do that, in Season 3. They’re on to me, how do I get around it?” He got lucky because if Harper had shown up with Nolan at the house, it would’ve been a much more difficult play, but I still think he would’ve tried to kill them both and act like they were both dirty. So at the end of this wild goose chase he definitely felt like, “Oh f–k. I think it was when he’s riding out to the “wild goose chase” and Nolan starts talking about “another dirty cop.” Harper was very right about the fact that Armstrong has basically been operating undercover for years within his department, and his radar is really fine-tuned. TVLINE | In your mind, when did Armstrong start formulating this frame job? Was it after he shot Erin? I didn’t want to the audience necessarily to feel sympathy for him, but I wanted them to feel like his friendship with Nolan is real. And at the end of the day, when push came to shove and he was told there is no “out,” he backed off. He was genuine in wanting to get out, and he definitely felt incredibly conflicted about killing Erin, but at the same time he killed Erin. At the end of the day, he will do what he has to do to survive, and so that moral voice that exists inside of him is somehow made worse by the fact that he can’t bring himself to actually listen to it. I think it goes back to this weakness of character. TVLINE | When we saw Armstrong dealing with Serj Darien outside his Escalade, he seemed very conflicted, very “I’m out.” But then during his final confrontation with Nolan, where he revealed he had framed him, he seems a little less contrite. But it was all built that way so that we could get to these last two episodes. I mean, we laid a lot of bread crumbs, obviously - we laid them with Rosalind several times, came back to it in Episode 14, and it looked like we put it to bed with him admitting that he broke into her house as the other secret. TVLINE | Did Harold Perrineau know from Day 1 that he’d ultimately be revealed as a dirty cop? Everybody loves Armstrong, so what do we do? Do we stay true to our initial vision? I definitely went back and forth a bit, but at the end of the day, you just have to do the most dramatic storytelling. It was always a plan and then we ran into the “problem” of Harold’s so great on the show. TVLINE | When you brought on the Armstrong character for Season 2, was this always the plan or is it something you decided mid-season? We’ll have to figure some stuff out in Season 3, but that last episode was super intense. Officer Nolan’s in quite a pickle, again.
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TVLINE | You got me good with that finale.
The rookie season finale series#
What happens next, should ABC renew the series for Season 3? Below, showrunner Alexi Hawley teases that as well as ponders how The Rookie might need to proceed differently in a post-pandemic world. But just as he uncovered the compartment built into the wall behind his headboard, sirens and lights arrived outside his doorstep, ready to make an arrest. Nolan rushed home, frantically looking for the evidence and ill-gotten cash that Armstrong had planted on him. That is when Armstrong revealed that he had taken measures to frame Nolan as being the other dirty cop that the late Erin Cole was in cahoots with - and that his recent break-in and now this shootout will only corroborate that scenario.
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When Armstrong called Nolan back over to hash things out mano a mano, gunfire was exchanged, though John appeared to emerge with the upper hand. Worse, his prey saw him leave the premises. Alas, Nolan’s rummaging got interrupted by Armstrong coming home. She revealed that her longtime adversary had a secret compartment inside his laundry room at home, inside of which Nolan might find damning evidence.
The rookie season finale serial#
After unsuccessfully trying to prove that mentor Detective Nick Armstrong (Harold Perrineau) was doing the bidding of crime boss Serj Darien, Nolan turned to serial killer Rosalind Dyer (Annie Wersching) for intel.