Will Tim and Lucy Get Back Together? ‘The Rookie’s Eric Winter Weighs in on the Future of Chenford
With his struggles behind him, will we see a new Tim Bradford when ‘The Rookie’ returns for its seventh season in 2025?
It’s been a tough year for Tim Bradford (Eric Winter) on The Rookie. He lost his much-coveted job on Metro and, as a result, he ended his relationship with Lucy (Melissa O’Neil), all of which led him to therapy. But then his therapist Blair London (Danielle Campbell) turned out to be in league with the bad guys, only that wasn’t discovered before she caused him to be relieved of duty. And, oh yeah, he was also being framed for murder.
Then again, it could have been worse. Tim could have been fired, but Sgt. Grey (Richard T. Jones) believed in him enough to put him back on patrol, although that, of course, was before the murder charges.
In tonight’s season finale, though, Tim finally caught a break and the discovery that Pierson (Daniel Bonjour) was framing him for Mad Dog’s (Nick Gomez) death, which in reality was a suicide, allowed him to return to duty and be put into action in the op that would reveal the truth.
“I think where we’ll see him pick up is he will be somebody that moves back onto patrol as a training officer,” Winter told Parade in this exclusive interview as to where Tim will be when we return in 2025 for Season 7. “I don’t see him going back in the rank that he was in in that Metro position, maybe not for quite some time. Maybe not ever. I think we’ll resume with him back on patrol and doing what we know Tim to be great at, which is training rookies.”
This cascade of events that began Tim’s downward spiral was of his own making. He saw one of his worst nightmares from the past come back to haunt him when a former military teammate Ray (David Dastmalchian) turned up in L.A. Tim had vowed to kill Ray if he ever saw him again, but Ray threatened to ruin Tim’s career by exposing his filing of a fraudulent after action report back when Ray allegedly died, so Tim decided to stalk him and catch him doing something illegal.
“At the end of the day, he knows how bad of a person he was dealing with, and he opted to lie to people he respected,” Winter, who thinks Tim believes he made the right decision, explains. “The fallout and its consequences could have been far worse. I think he’s trying to convince himself that he lied for the greater good—to protect Angela (Alyssa Diaz) and Lucy, but it’s hard for him. I think that’s why he lost himself and that even led to the Chenford breakup. He is struggling with an identity and what he represents.”
All may not be lost when it comes to Chenford. Despite the bad breakup, Lucy still loves Tim, and she has gone out of her way to help him in his difficulties. She even put her life at risk by jumping from a moving car to a moving truck when Tim was losing a fight with the driver of the truck.
