In season 6 of The Rookie, Tim and Lucy met a surprising fate that not all fans were happy with. Now the series creator is defending the controversial decision
Tim (Eric Carter) and Lucy (Melissa O’Neil) are one of the top reasons for many The Rookie fans to look forward to new episodes week after week. For years, we wished for the two colleagues to finally find each other before they got together in season 5.
Spoiler alert for season 6 of The Rookie: their happiness wasn’t to last long. Because season 6 dramatically tore Chenford apart again – a decision that was heavily criticized by many The Rookie fans. Now there are words of explanation from series creator Alexi Hawley
“The wanting is the most romantic”: The Rookie creator explains Chenford break-up
According to TV Insider, Alexi Hawley now explained what the decision around Tim and Lucy is all about – and also what’s planned for the dream couple in season 7:
‘We have to find the adventure. We have to walk the path of what it looks like when they find their way back into a relationship both short term and long term, and that’s not necessarily the same? The audience wants that will-they-won’t-they tension, we know that from the history of television. The wanting is the most romantic. How do we get back to a point where we can have that?
(Melissa O’Neil and Eric Carter are The Rookie fan favorites)
By the will-they-won’t-they trope, Hawley is referring to the narrative stylistic device where fans often wonder for years whether two characters will end up together or not. Very prominent examples are Ross and Rachel in Friends or Mulder and Skully in The X-Files.
This is what Hawley says about The Rookie season 7: In the cop series, the aim is still to surprise the audience with unexpected twists and turns and to take risks:
We’ve gone pretty far out on a limb and I love that we keep challenging ourselves and we’re doing even better, but at the same time we’re aiming even more for how much does everyone love these characters? I consider myself very lucky that we can have fun every week, even when we’re doing stuff that has a big drop or is tragic, and because we tonally cover everything, we can give you an episode every week that will push you to the edge of your seat.
With the tonal coverage, Hawley aims for the series to have plenty of comedy elements and laughs as well as tragic and high-tension moments. Nathan Fillion also knows that this is The Rookies’ recipe for success
