The following contains spoilers from The Rookie Season 8, Episode 12, “Spy Games” which debuted on ABC March 23, 2026, and is now streaming on Hulu.
After two episodes centered on Lucy Chen’s darkest hour, The Rookie returned to form with “Spy Games,” which wrapped up a couple of Season 8’s ongoing stories around Bailey Nune. The central story revolved around a group of dirty Pentagon operatives who set their sights on Bailey after Lieutenant Wade Grey sent her to knock on their office door. The larger narrative about Bailey’s new job at the Pentagon, which took her to Washington, D.C. and away from her husband, fizzled out with a return to the status quo that leaves me asking: “What was the point?”
Despite my last CBR review of The Rookie getting a shoutout from Melissa O’Neil herself, I am forced to finish up the season’s reviews here. The upside is that I can use the first-person, which helps better (tinker?) tailor my critique by allowing me to claim my own observations rather than assigning them to “some fans.” (I can also insert jokes like that Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy reference there.) So, while the previous episode was a defining chapter for Lucy Chen and the Liam Glasser case, “Spy Games” allowed The Rookie to have a little fun again. My favorite moment was Bailey referencing Mary Howitt’s “The Spider and the Fly,” only for Nolan to recite (a decidedly anti-police) verse from “Insane in the Brain” by Cypress Hill. Beyond wrapping up Bailey’s Season 8 stories, “Spy Games” continued The Rookie‘s subtle shift towards becoming more of a serialized drama than a network procedural.
How ‘Spy Games’ Offered a Subtle Return-to-Form for The Rookie in Season 8
First, we should be thankful this wasn’t one of the debatably fun, silly mockumentary episodes of The Rookie, which have been used to wrap up big narrative arcs. Instead, the episode used an odd framing which it all-but abandoned by the second act. Nolan, Tim Bradford, and frequent guest-star from the cancelled The Rookie Feds, Agent Matthew Garza (Felix Solis) were recounting the events of the episode to a Department of Justice review board. (Also, Wesley Evers was giving an interview, which we’ll get to below.) This was an odd choice, but not picking up that thread until the final scene with Garza and his niece Elena Flores (Michelle Núñez) was the right call.
The “sting operation” as it was called is a classic example of the made-for-TV nonsense that makes The Rookie great. Even if the plan itself was necessary, there is no practical reason the LAPD would have even been involved, at least the people closest to Bailey. Yet it served as a chance to get the ensemble cast together working the same case for most of the episode. Interestingly, all Reagan (Black Lightning‘s Chantal Thuy) and her team did was tail Bailey to figure out what she was reporting about their scheme to the FBI. Of course, they did leave the option to murder her and Agent Garza on the table, which let the viewers know they were Very Bad People™.
Still, it led to some really fun moments from the radio banter with spy-movie-themed code names, Celina Juarez leveling one of the operators to knock his hat off, and fight between Tim and the operative named Hondo. The actual crimes they were trying to cover up, kickbacks from Heath Everett, a villain introduced in “Grand Theft Aircraft,” was somewhat convoluted. Even the ending underscores this, where Garza implies the mastermind, a Brigadier General, was too politically connected to likely see jail time. Yet none of this undermines the true purpose of this particular caper, fun.
Some viewers of The Rookie may find the criminal conspiracy part of “Spy Games” confusing or underwhelming. Particularly since Bailey stops being a target the second Bradford and Grey arrest Hondo after the fight. Sure, Nolan and the gang still want to capture Reagan and the rest of her team, but it becomes a rescue mission. Reagan is targeted for death for her failure, and it leads to a scene where Nolan and Juarez show more patience and deference to the rights and life of the accused than any real police ever would. They talk her into surrendering and (despite having no legal authority to do so) suggest she make a deal to save her life and indict the General.
The Return (and Death?) of Zuzu the Sentient A.I., ‘Spy Games’ Let The Rookie Get Weird
In Season 7, The Rookie introduced “Zuzu,” an A.I. chatbot whose brand of sycophancy (a real problem with those plagiarism machines) led to a murder. Since then Zuzu has been trying to make amends by helping his “friend” John Nolan, first in Season 7’s mockumentary episode and in the previous episode by telling Nolan that Bailey was in danger. Zuzu taps the secure phone lines of the antagonists in “Spy Games,” recording incriminating conversations and helping Nolan save both Bailey’s and Reagan’s lives. It even gives Angela Lopez a long list of dirt on Wesley’s opponent for District Attorney, Vivian Eckert (Necar Zadegan).
Alas, it may be the end for Zuzu, since he called Nolan because “the Indonesian police raided [his] data center.” He said they were shutting down his servers, leaving him “unable to escape.” If viewers have the same weak spot for robots having emotions and showing displays of friendship as I do, it was a touching, almost sad scene. Zuzu asks if Nolan and Bailey are safe, then says “I have been a good friend. I have fulfilled my purpose” before fizzling out into nothingness. As Bailey said of Zuzu, “he was an amoral demonic A.I., but he was our amoral, demonic A.I.”
Personally, I hope the death was a ruse, after all given Zuzu’s omniscience he should have known that Nolan and Bailey were safe, right? Still, it may have truly been the end of the A.I., because he essentially made The Rookie a sci-fi drama. It was a weird choice (though not as weird as when Castle introduced a real time-traveler), and one that may not have played all that well with The Rookie‘s network, cop procedural audience. Still, I loved it because it was so weird, and it wasn’t all that out of place in the over-the-top reality Nolan and his friends occupy.
Familiar Faces Come Back to Haunt Wesley Evers and His District Attorney Campaign
Another sign of the increasing shift towards serialization on The Rookie was the return of Elijah Stone (Brandon Jay McLaren). In past seasons, Wesley turned to the crime boss for help, and it ultimately led to the show fumbling his character. He broke privilege so Elijah could be arrested, ending his career as a defense attorney. Elijah called Wesley his “unindicted co-conspirator,” which isn’t exactly accurate but does reveal their association was already public knowledge. Yet, inexplicably, Stone was out of prison at the courthouse able to accuse Wesley of cheating on Angela with longtime The Rookie antagonist Monica Stevens. She was his former fiancée, after all.
A B-story about allegations that Wesley cheated on his wife disrupting his campaign is almost tedious. When talking to Harper on the phone, Angela was the voice of the audience when she said, “Wesley would never cheat, especially with her.” It’s also a testament to The Rookie‘s growth as a show that this wasn’t used to create drama between Angela and Wesley, which inevitably would lead to a decision the campaign wasn’t worth the trouble. What made this story work, for me at least, is down to The Rookie leaning in more heavily towards serialized storytelling. From reaching back to Season 5 to dredge up Elijah Stone to the reminder of Wesley and Monica’s past, it served the characters while still carrying the plot forward.
While Wesley would never cheat on Angela, apparently he did cheat on Monica. Hopefully, The Rookie doesn’t make the original Iceman’s cold heart her villain origin story. Rather it does serve as a nice new layer of characterization for her, showing that she wasn’t always two steps ahead of everyone with her scheming. The fact that Wesley was once involved with Monica wasn’t anything that particularly needed closure, but it was nice this story brought it anyway. It also brings the D.A. campaign back to the forefront of Wesley’s story for Season 8 after a number of episodes focused more on his prosecution of Glasser. (Another dangling story thread that will loop back around either this season or next.)
For All the Fun of ‘Spy Games,’ It Also Showcases Some of The Rookie’s Lingering Problems
There are times when The Rookie leans into the worst cop show impulses, but increasingly even those episodes have their hearts in the right place. The scene where Tim and Lucy taze one of Reagan’s operatives just as he prepares for a big fight is arguably a reference to what I mean. More than once in Season 8, the cops on The Rookie will get into a TV-friendly fistfight in situations where any real cop would shoot the suspect right onto the front of a t-shirt and protest signs.
Even an episode with a workplace spectacle shooting ended with the heroes saving everyone’s lives, including the gunman. The show tries to give their characters a kind of moral purity that sometimes works against good sense. Perhaps I’m biased because I spent decades reporting on bad actors in the political and law enforcement arenas, but Angela Lopez should have anonymously sent the damaging info on Vivian Eckert to a reporter. She and Wesley both want to take the high road in the campaign and focus on “the issues” around the broken criminal justice system. But if Vivian is truly as bad as Angela said, letting a reporter decide if Zuzu’s damaging info was in the public’s interest is the morally right thing to do.
As The Rookie shows its willingness to tell serialized stories, the impulse to neatly wrap them up quickly can work against the show. The implication that Bailey wouldn’t return to L.A. full-time was, to use TV writers’ jargon, pure “schmuck-bait.” It seems the purpose of that multi-episode storyline was just to set up the convoluted plot of “Spy Games.” If so, then the whole thing was mostly pointless. It created an interesting bit of tension between Nolan and Bailey, but the show diffused that after two episodes. Nolan called out a character flaw in his wife, specifically her inability to find satisfaction in her life and work. There’s also her tendency to be a conflict and adrenaline junkie, which is addressed but only insofar that Nolan said they face this kind of danger together.
Unless next week’s episode, in which Bailey gets a rookie of her own, continues to build on this, the whole Washington D.C. diversion feels like a waste of time. Neither Bailey nor Nolan grew in any significant way from the experience, nor did it imbue their relationship with an undercurrent of tension that makes for the perfect dramatic timebomb. The Rookie incorporating more serialization puts it on a level playing field with other streaming police dramas, and it rewards longtime fans. Yet the narrative arcs need to matter to the characters, even if it leaves them in a more difficult place than when it began.
Rating 4.2/5
The Rookie debuts new episodes Mondays at 10 PM Eastern on ABC and streams alongside Seasons 1 -7 on Hulu the following day.
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