ABC’s The Rookie just delivered one of the most shocking episodes of Season 7 thus far, complete with a major death that brings an ongoing storyline to a close and an emotional case for Celina (Lisseth Chavez) revolving around her dead sister. In the middle of it all, however, was a sequence inspired heavily by a classic thriller, the latest in the show’s trend of paying homage to beloved films. During a larger discussion with Collider’s Therese Lacson about Episode 14, titled “Mad About Murder,” showrunner Alexi Hawley broke down how the series honored 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs with Celina’s search for a missing pregnant woman named Aria (Julia Rose). He also discussed his mindset behind organically weaving references to movies into the world of John Nolan (Nathan Fillion) and his team.
Season 7, Episode 14 sees Celina racing to stop a true-crime podcaster who is covering the abduction and murder of her sister as her latest case. On the way to shutting that down, though, she and Lucy (Melissa O’Neil) are approached by a young woman asking for help in finding her sister. The investigation eventually takes them to a woman named Greta, whom Aria had visited about renting a room. Realizing she was holding the sister captive, they devise a plan to get in and rescue both Aria and her baby before the worst comes to pass, though the officers find a chilling sight within. Aria is chained up in the basement, and by the end of the confrontation, Greta was preparing to stab the child, making for a traumatizing experience for Celina, given what happened to her sister.
Hawley said that “I think that’s always part of our language,” when asked about incorporating film homages into The Rookie. Just two episodes back for April Fools’ Day, the series did a riff on The Purge involving a prank gone terribly wrong that gets the Mid-Wilshire crew involved. The sequence of entering Greta’s home in Episode 14, meanwhile, was an homage to the inside of Buffalo Bill’s home that Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling enters in Silence of the Lambs’ final confrontation. It even features a similar climax that Hawley wanted to reference to add a bit of terror to the sequence:
“I mean, you know, even in 14, in the one that airs tonight, the sort of sequence in the house when they go looking for that girl who’s gone missing. I mean, that was very inspired by, you know, Jame Gumb’s house in The Silence of the Lambs, right? When I started writing that story, to me, that’s what immediately jumped to mind was that amazing sequence from the movie where Clarice is, you know, he bolts into the house and she’s looking for him, and it’s really scary. And so that’s what we wanted to sort of homage to in that sequence. So we’re always sort of conscious of, you know, if there are things that are in the same story context that we’re in just doing right by them.”
What’s Next for ‘The Rookie’ Season 7?
Next week’s episode will continue with a fan-favorite format that hasn’t been seen since Season 5 — a documentary-themed episode. Episode 15 will put a true crime spin on a missing person’s case connected to Nolan, as it follows up with Abigail Tierney’s (Madeleine Coghlan) sudden disappearance. A promo teased what happened six months prior, after she began investigating a hospital known for delivering multiple children that grew up to become serial killers for a documentary of her own. It’ll be up to the Mid-Wilshire team to crack the case, which Hawley teased comes with “a few unexpected revelations” along the way.
