‘The Rookie’s Eric Winter Teases ‘Sprinkles Of Development’ For Chenford In Finale
Chenford fans, ‘The Rookie’ season 3 finale has arrived. HL spoke EXCLUSIVELY with Eric Winter about the dance, ‘Chenford moments’ in the finale, and hopes for season 4.
Ever since the promo for The Rookie season 3 finale aired, Chenford fans have been wondering: are Tim and Lucy finally going to go there? Tim asks Lucy to save him a dance at Lopez’s wedding. HollywoodLife got some EXCLUSIVE scoop from Eric Winter about what’s going down in the finale. So, will Tim and Lucy share this dance?
“That’s going to be the joy of the finale for the fans to get to see what they see,” Eric told HollywoodLife. “I tell you, I saw one tweet that was really funny. I check out these feeds and stuff. This one fan was saying in season 1 the Chenford army was like five people. Now season 3 it’s trending on Twitter. It’s phenomenal how much of a life it’s taken on its own. It’s really, in a cool way, and become sort of like a show within the show. Everything that Chenford does gets tracked and monitored, every line, every look. If we’re not in an episode very much together, there’s an uproar. It’s fun to see the fans’ engagement with that, and I love engaging back with them. They have just been so receptive.”
Chenford fans are still holding out hope that Tim and Lucy will eventually be more than just co-workers. While Eric couldn’t reveal exactly what happens between them in the finale, he did tease, “There are always sprinkles of development there. There are always tidbits. Obviously, she’s not my rookie anymore, so this is something that can start to expand. But I always wonder, right? It’s like Ross and Rachel with Friends. Once they get together, are the fans going to be excited? Or do they like being tortured more? I don’t know.”
Eric acknowledged that the slow burn between Tim and Lucy has gone on for a very long time. “There are Chenford moments in the finale, and I think it will only feed into what could come in season 4. I imagine that’s going to continue to build more and more,” he told HollywoodLife.
Lucy has decided to go into deep undercover work. Eric revealed that we will see how Tim feels about Lucy entering such dangerous territory. “You’re going to see Tim definitely struggles with it,” Eric said. “He’s obviously shown he’s very supportive of her and feels she’s one of the best rookies he’s trained. He has a lot of admiration for the way she does work. He’s very proud of her, but there’s obviously that side of him we’ve seen come out, and there’s going to be more of it. He lost his wife to a very difficult undercover work with narcotics, but also just being undercover. Now there is a partner that he deeply cares about, and she’s going undercover. So he’s supportive, but he struggles I think knowing just how dangerous that side of the business can be and how easy it is to start to get lost in it. It’s definitely something that he supports, but I think really struggles with it overall.”
The Rookie has been renewed for season 4 by ABC. Eric has already thought of some amazing storylines to explore with Tim in future episodes. “I want to start meeting some of Tim’s family,” Eric revealed. “I pitched Alexi [Hawley] an idea. And I don’t want to reveal who the first one is that I pitched, but maybe a sister coming on. They had talked about bringing up my father at some point, which would be a pretty heavy story because I think that relationship for Tim is not a great one and has shaped him in a lot of ways or put a lot of rough around the edges on Tim. But I pitched the idea of a sister that he deeply cares about and he’s very close to but has a very different personality, which would be very fun dynamic-wise. Tim is so serious, so she could be somebody that would come in and shed light on his seriousness and almost poke fun at him, somebody that could get under Tim’s skin in a way that people haven’t seen.”
