The Rookie Losing Its Edge with Season 6 Outlandish Villains

Summary

• The final episode of The Rookie Season 6 will be released next week.
• This time the criminals are more dangerous than any of the villains in previous seasons.
• This imbalance can be explained by the reduced number of episodes due to WGA and SAG-AFTRA.

The Rookie's popularity with viewers remains strong, which has earned the ABC show a renewal for a new seventh season. Pretty good news considering its spin-off, Feds, was unfortunately canceled due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.

The strikes also affected the main series, as The Rookie Season 6 has only 10 episodes instead of the usual 20-22, so there hasn't been much content about our favorite members of the LAPD Mid-Wilshire Patrol Division, and next week we'll already see the finale.

And the closer we get to the end of the next chapter of The Rookie, the more revealing the events become. For example, after the last episode it became clearer who the mastermind might be this time. Only the fans were a bit confused, because the villains are getting more outlandish every season, and the regular cops are having to deal with those who are usually targeted by S.W.A.T.

So, Who Was It?

Picking up where the Season 5 finale left off, we all thought the main villain of the new season would be Boyd Taylor (Kristian Bruun). However, Boyd was shot by a sniper, and someone much more powerful was behind it all.

Fans have suspected that Blair London (Danielle Campbell) was the mastermind behind Boyd's murder. Blair is an LAPD psychiatrist assigned to Aaron Thorsen (Tru Valentino) to help him deal with his trauma after being shot. London was too suspicious, considering how conveniently she ran into Aaron every time, and later ingratiated herself with Tim Bradford (Eric Winter).

A villain who understands their enemy's psyche could prove to be one of the most dangerous, but it turned out that the real Big Bad was far more deadly, enigmatic, and obviously smarter, as Blair turned out to be just a pawn, a mole planted in the LAPD. Episode 8 revealed that (at least one of) the season's major villains is Monica Stevens (Bridget Regan), the defense attorney for Elijah Stone, the previous season's villain. She is the one Blair leaked the information to.

Thus, Monica has truly proven to be one of the toughest criminals the Mid-Wilshire Division has ever come across, as in addition to her excellent understanding of the laws and loopholes in them, she has an entire network of spies who are now perfectly aware of the protagonists' every move. And if she's still working for Stone, last season's antagonist may be even more cunning than we thought, running things from behind bars.

All the Criminals Are Nothing Compared to the Ones in S6

Think back to the villains of the early seasons. Sure, the protagonists had to deal with dangerous serial killers and cunning adversaries like Elena Ruiz, but for the most part, they were wannabe killers, abusers, and racist cops. All of which shows how insanely dangerous the later seasons of The Rookie became.

However, we should keep in mind that Season 6 was shortened by half due to last year's Hollywood labor disputes. If the show had the same number of episodes, the writers would have been able to balance the typical LAPD workday with the high-octane pursuit of federal criminals.

As it stands, due to the season's limitations, the focus has been on the latter, i.e., a meatier storyline, and as a result, we feel like this season regular beat cops are constantly busy catching super villains that belong in the Marvel Universe.

The final episode of The Rookie's sixth season will air on ABC on Tuesday, May 21, 2024, before landing on Hulu the day after. Season 7 is already in development.