Get ready for shakeups in “The Rookie” Season 8. ABC’s hit cop dramedy returns Tuesday from an extra-long break, promising a continent-hopping adventure — and creator Alexi Hawley is promising significant challenges ahead for the Mid-Wilshire crew.
“Each of our characters goes through some real hard times, or dynamic times, at different stages of the year,” Hawley told TheWrap ahead of Tuesday’s Season 8 premiere. “Marriages will be challenged, and along the way, in different ways, careers will be challenged, in what will feel like seismic, at the time, ways. It’s a big season.”
How big? Well, Season 8 kicks things off with an overseas episode, sending Nolan (Nathan Fillion) and some more of the Mid-Wilshire team to Prague, where the series picks up the thread dangled by Monica’s (Bridget Regan) return in the Season 7 finale.
If you need a refresher, the attorney-turned-antagonist (and Wesley’s former fiancée) came back on the scene after breaking bad in a big way in Season 6. She spent most of Season 7 on the lam and strutted back in just in time for the finale episode with a shiny new immunity deal.
Season 8 picks up with the team working alongside her in Prague to hunt down terrorists, which Fillion has said felt like a James Bond movie. But it only felt that way — it did not come with a Bond-sized budget. “Our budgets aren’t getting any bigger, so that’s just figuring it out internally,” Hawley explained. “We can do really big episodes, and we can do episodes that are much more economical, but don’t feel small.”
Heading into Season 8, Hawley was inspired by his experience working on “The Recruit” for Netflix, which sent production to South Korea for its second season. “It just felt very possible,” he said, adding that Prague came to mind because of “how cinematic and dynamic and how different from LA it felt.”
Should fans expect more overseas adventures for the LAPD team? Hawley says he’d “love to keep doing this, if I can get away with it.”
According to Hawley, it’s that constant evolution and unexpected next destination that keeps the series alive and kicking: “I really think that the success of the show is because we just constantly keep shaking things up and doing things differently,” he said.
Not all shakeups are bad, either. After a rough couple of seasons, it sounds like fan favorite sweethearts Lucy Chen (Melissa O’Neil) and Tim Bradford (Eric Winter) are headed into better times.
“Chenford fans will feel pretty good about this season,” Hawley promised, though he also warned that Season 8 is not without some challenges for the beloved couple.
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“I do think that we put them through the ringer as we dealt with this breakup, which really did shatter some things and needed to be put back together elegantly,” he continued. “There’s a conversation that definitely needs to be had, and some ground rules that need to be set, but ultimately, we’re definitely moving into the next chapter of this.”
Last we saw them, the pair were having a sweet catch-up after Lucy’s night shift, and Tim asked her to move in with him. But there was one problem — Lucy fell asleep mid-way through their conversation. So what does the next chapter look like for them?
“I think it’ll be a joy,” Hawley said, “but at the same time, obviously, with, as with any relationship, there’ll be challenges that we’ll have to navigate.”
We’ll see what challenges lie in wait for the team, both during their overseas adventure and back home in Los Angeles, when “The Rookie” returns for Season 8, Tuesday on ABC.
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