The Rookie stars Melissa O’Neil and Eric Winter are known to fans as Lucy Chen and Tim Bradford. As a duo, they are Chenford – and broke the audience’s hearts in season 6. Because the season ended with the dream couple breaking up.
Since then, the fan community has been asking itself:
Will The Rookie couple Chenford get back together in season 7?
Actor Winter hinted at what will happen next with police couple Lucy and Tim in an interview with the British Hello! magazine:
We’re going to see them move on from a point where they’ve shown that they care about each other, and now they have to figure out, ‘Can we give each other space to do our work and keep our feelings in a safe place without rushing into something and hoping nobody gets sidetracked?’
The actor only became more specific when it came to the fact that his character in the series will once again train new cops, like Officer Nolan (Nathan Fillion) did at the beginning of The Rookie. But he also said about the dramatic breakup with his co-star in the series:
When I [Showrunner] When Alexi was informed of this, I thought it would be a great opportunity for us to learn more about Tim and why he would even go through this or put her through this. When we got that breakup scene, it was a very atypical breakup. It’s kind of traditional – ‘It’s on me, not you’ – but we talked about it a lot. Melissa had her approach and I had mine, which were very different.
Winter wanted to develop the scene in the moment, or rather let it develop as it played out. One aspect of it particularly fascinated him:
What was interesting, however, is that there was no good reason for the separation; Tim was completely lost in who he is and what he had been through. He lied to two people who were very important to him in his life and at the end of the day he just didn’t think he was good enough for them. Idyllic conversation in season 7 of The Rookie?
If you look at the Instagram profiles of both actors, you’ll notice that they both posted this week from an idyllic-looking forest. Winter with a few photos and a selfie, O’Neil with very similar forest impressions and a bit of Japanese poetry. Enough clues for fans to speculate that Chenford could get closer again in idyllic surroundings in season 7.
We won’t find out whether that’s really the case until 2025, when the new season of The Rookie with presumably 18 new episodes starts on the US broadcaster ABC and shortly thereafter on our channel.