The Rookie Reintroduces a Familiar Face As Its Latest Murderous Villain
In the previous episode, titled “Hit and Run,” The Rookie set up a few plot lines that will be explored going forward, and “Breakdown” started to address some of them. For example, Sergeant Bradford’s traumatic childhood came to light, and Nolan was ready to propose by the end of the episode (until a big twist happened). Even with all of that, the most important storyline that this week’s episode addressed was between Wesley and Elijah. Here’s what happened and what it could mean going forward.
The conflict between Wesley and Elijah was a long time in the making. It all started at the beginning of Season 3 when a drug queenpin, named La Fiera, took a liking to Detective Angela (Wesley’s wife). The two of them stayed on good terms until a shooting killed La Fiera’s son, and Angela called her out on it, which resulted in a feud. Then, in the Season 3 finale, La Fiera kidnaped Angela and killed Officer Jackson West in the process.
Season 4 opened with everyone desperate to rescue Angela, but first, they had to find her. That proved difficult, so Wesley made a deal with Elijah — another major criminal — to help find his wife. It all worked out as they rescued Angela and killed La Fiera. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of things. As part of their deal, Wesley had to agree to be Elijah’s dirty lawyer. For all of Season 4, Wesley has been doing just that, and it has made him cross all kinds of legal and moral lines.
Wesley made the arrangement work for the sake of his family, but as things went on, Elijah’s demands and personal threats only got worse. So, last week, he finally approached Sergeant Grey and asked for help, and this week, in “Breakdown,” the LAPD started their operation to take down Elijah. That, however, proved to be a difficult task.
At first, they sent Wesley into a scheduled meeting to plant a listening bug (which could put Wesley in possible legal trouble), but that backfired when the bug caused static interference with Elijah’s walkie-talkies. As a result, Elijah fired Wesley and made some veiled threats (because he knew that the police were listening in) against everyone.
After some digging, they found out that Elijah was smuggling his drugs into the country through a food pantry because the sealed cans kept the drug dogs from uncovering his operation. That was enough to get an arrest warrant against Elijah, and the LAPD moved to take him down. However, things quickly got complicated. As they approached Elijah’s headquarters, dispatch notified their squad that gunfire had been reported at their destination.
When they arrived, someone had beaten them there. All of Elijah’s henchmen were dead, and he was hiding in a storage cabinet. He told them that Abril Rodas – who was one of La Fiera’s lieutenants, a combat specialist and all around badass — was back for revenge, since he told Wesley where to find La Fiera. Security footage proved that Elijah was right; Abril killed all eight of Elijah’s men single-handedly while other members of her gang reclaimed all of La Fiera’s old territory.
Later, Abril contacted Angela and said that as long as no one pursued her to Guatemala, Angela would never hear from her again. Maybe that’s true, but it seems way too coincidental to reintroduce such a strong villain and not use her at all. So, it’s more likely that fans of The Rookie haven’t seen the last of Abril.
