‘The Rookie’ Season 5 Finale: Is [Spoiler] Really Dead?

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for The Rookie Season 5 finale, “Under Siege.”]

The Rookie Season 5 finale title proved to be fitting. Horror elements were featured throughout “Under Siege,” during which a group of masked men attacked the officers of the LAPD Mid-Wilshire Division with an eery plan.

The group attacked in stages. First, they went after Aaron Thorsen (Tru Valentino) and Celina Juarez (Lisseth Chavez), heading home after a long session of Dungeons & Dragons. The pair split up to evade the attackers, but as Juarez was running back to Thorsen’s aid, he was shot in the back while on his knees. Juarez was then knocked out by one of the other attackers, and just before she went unconscious, they whispered a riddle in her ear.

Thorsen’s fate was left up in the air as he was rushed into surgery. When the hospitalized Juarez came to, she told John Nolan (Nathan Fillion) the ominous rhyme her attacker delivered before passing out again. The next attack was staged at Nolan and Bailey’s (Jenna Dewan) home. Nolan saw the assailant outside and rushed to confront them, but there was only a mask when he arrived. He went back inside to find the assailant attacking Bailey, and the resulting fight led to Bailey stabbing the attacker in the shoulder.

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The group targeted Nyla Harper (Mekia Cox) by kidnapping her daughter, but she was quickly saved. Lucy Chen (Melissa O’Neil) and Tim Bradford (Eric Winter) nearly became the group’s next victims when the hoard of masked attackers approached armed with riot gear, but the LAPD came to their aid in the nick of time.

Chenford had suspected the attack was staged by Luke Moran (Chet Grissom), and their hunch was correct. He was motivated by serving time for elder abuse and was out to get the LAPD as a result. But Moran wasn’t a wealthy criminal. Nolan had a hunch that there was more to this threat than met the eye. And that hunch proved to be right. Just before Moran died, he had a phone call with the real person in charge, setting the stage for the finale’s cliffhanger ending.

The group attack seemed to be a decoy allowing for the real person in power to set their next stage of the plan in motion. As the chaos of the fight was reined in, two cars drove past the scuffle. Kristian Bruun was in one of the cars and ominously laughed at the precinct’s response to the hired mercenaries.

“Look at ‘em go! Hot damn that is money well spent,” he said. “Weaponizing Luke Moran against the LAPD has driven every cop in the city away from our target, and by the time they realize the damage we’ve done, we’ll be long gone.”

The post-surgery Thorsen was in a coma back in the hospital, and the episode ended as he went into Code Blue. Thorsen’s fate, and the new villain’s plans, will be revealed in The Rookie Season 6. It certainly was a high-adrenaline finale. Now that it’s played out, we want to know how you feel. Does killing off Thorsen make sense for the ABC cop procedural? What do you think of this new threat against the LAPD? Let us know your thoughts in the poll and comments section below.

The Rookie, Season 6, TBA, ABC