Not Even a Major 'Supernatural' Crossover Can Save 'The Rookie's Worst Episode This Season | Review

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John Nolan (Nathan Fillion) stands in front of a white wall with a nightstick in 'The Rookie' Season 8 Episode 10

Published Apr 13, 2026, 11:00 PM EDT

Erin Konrad's love for everything entertainment dates back to elementary school when she became obsessed with classic Hollywood musicals. When she's not catching up on all her favorite television shows, she's advising her friends and family on what they should binge watch next.

She has her Bachelor's degree in Journalism and a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Creating content for Collider gives her the opportunity to combine her writing skills with her passion for television and movies. She spends her free time trying to beat her personal record of reading 137 books in a year and cuddling with her dog, Gracie.

Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for The Rookie Season 8, Episode 15.ABC's The Rookie likes to switch things up to avoid becoming a stale procedural. However, the series has become way too determined to repeat weak elements of the show lately. I've already noted how frustrated I am that The Rookie keeps bringing back old characters instead of focusing on fresh ones, and this week, things got even worse when the writers repeated the documentary-style format that I hate so much. Just like this type of narrative from last season, the storytelling results in one of The Rookie's most frustrating episodes ever.

'The Rookie' Once Again Does a Documentary-Style Episode

The episode opens with John Nolan (Nathan Fillion) and Celina Juarez (Lisseth Chavez) answering a disturbing 9-1-1 call. Instead of getting right into a mysterious case, we then see John being interviewed by the documentary crew from last season, along with Abigail Tierney (Madeleine Coghlan). Abigail has recovered from her ghost mishap from last season, and is working with the doc crew to make her own movie. Right off the bat, the format fails. Instead of following along with a fascinating case, we're taken out of the story time and again by Abigail's interruptions. They've also made the choice to make Abigail even more annoying, which basically resulted in me wanting to turn off the show every time she appeared onscreen.

Nolan and Celina, seated in police uniforms in the station, in 'The Rookie'

Back to the 9-1-1 call: the cops discover a disheveled man in a creepy cabin. He's muttering to himself, and there's a knife sticking out of his chest. In his distress, the man pulls the knife out and instantly dies. We then learn that the man was Rich Rowley (Jamie Martz), a retired LAPD officer who was well-known for his cringey training videos (that we got a glimpse of last season). The odd thing is that Rich has been missing since 2022, when he disappeared after a boat accident. It turns out that Rich faked his death because he had become obsessed with conspiracy theories. The story takes a turn again when a coffin is found in Rich's garage. Inside is a 54-year-old truck driver named Marcus Ford, who died in 2020. A tattoo on the man is also found in graffiti in a shot of one of Rich's training videos. But what links these two stories together? Turns out, the answer is extremely convoluted.

'The Rookie' Season 8, Episode 15 Focuses on Cold Cases and Past Characters

The Rookie - Season 6 - Trouble in Paradise - Smitty grins

In order to learn more about the case, Lucy Chen (Melissa O'Neil) looks back through all of Rich's old training videos for clues. Some of the videos had gone missing, but the hard drives were given to the Game Changers crew. Yep, that means that all of these characters from Episode 9 are back again. For some, this might feel like a nice throwback, but it just seemed awkward to me to bring back these people from just a few episodes ago. Once Lucy manages to view all of the videos, she notices some intriguing details that actually link Rich to seven cold cases. All of these cases were murders, with the victims having been stabbed in their hearts. It gets even weirder, though, because they were also all found with a penny from 1930 on their bodies.

Then the episode takes a wild left turn into alien conspiracies (yep, it makes absolutely no sense). After hacking into Rich's cloud account, the cops see that he once broke into a military facility called Area 67. There's a side note about Nolan once calling into a radio show asking questions about aliens, but this just feels like a superfluous diversion, as does Smitty (Brent Huff) claiming he was once abducted by aliens. An officer at the army base (Thomas Lennon) points the cops to Rich's obsession: a B-movie called 300 Days of Hell that Angela Lopez (Alyssa Diaz) considers the scariest movie of the 1990s. The myth of the movie follows the story of a murder cult possessed by a demon named Malaphus, who needs a human host to survive, and travels to a new victim every 300 days. The movie's plot is being carried out in real life with the murders, and copper (like from a penny) is supposed to slow down Malaphus. The Rookie then proceeds to show a scene from the horror movie that is bloody, over-the-top, and completely unnecessary. We do meet the director of the movie, who is deemed a "reckless maniac," and eventually becomes crucial to solving the case.

There Are Aliens, Demons, and Cults in Just This One Episode of 'The Rookie'

Angela and Nyla stand somberly in 'The Rookie.'

The only upside to this episode is a Supernatural cameo with Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, who talk to the cops because they once had an interaction with Rich at a fan event. He questioned them about demon hunters, pointing to the fact that Rich was blurring fiction with reality. Then we get another diversion: a priest named Father Simon would bless the movie set every day. Tim Bradford (Eric Winter) and Angela had once been called to a case of a 15-year-old girl who had died in an exorcism that Father Simon had been performing. She had simply had a brain tumor, which meant that Father Simon was convicted of first-degree murder. They interview him in prison, which means we get another digression into fraternal orders in Los Angeles. The one Rich was obsessed with is basically a demon-hunting cult.

Abigail and the documentary filmmaker go to interview the director of the horror movie. They're confronted with guns, but the police arrive before anyone is hurt. The director gives a whole spiel in his interrogation about the demon, but Angela and Nyla Harper (Mekia Cox) shut it down, stating that they know the director was responsible for all of the murders, and each of the victims was someone who had wronged him. The episode wraps up with the end of the documentary, and the filmmaker says he would be open to doing another collab with Abigail, who then admits she's already signed a three-film contract with Hulu. This makes me extremely worried that The Rookie is going to come out with another of these types of episodes, and I'm literally begging them not to. The series thrives on interesting cases that are told in a more cohesive way, with opportunities for character growth, and these doc-style episodes offer none of that. Between the extraneous storylines, way too many characters, and endless red herrings, this episode was basically a mess from start to finish.

New episodes of The Rookie air on Monday nights on ABC, with episodes available to stream on Hulu in the U.S.

Release Date October 16, 2018

Showrunner Alexi Hawley

Directors Tori Garrett, Chi-Yoon Chung, Michael Goi, Sylvain White, Lisa Demaine, Lanre Olabisi, Bill Johnson, David McWhirter, Liz Friedlander, Daniel Willis, Toa Fraser, Anne Renton, Jon Huertas, Cherie Nowlan, TK Shom, Rob Seidenglanz, Valerie Weiss, Barbara Brown, Charissa Sanjarernsuithikul, SJ Main Muñoz, Nelson McCormick, Marcus Stokes, Adam Davidson, Anna Mastro

Writers Corey Miller, Bill Rinier, Zoe Cheng, Mary Trahan, Ally Seibert, Liz Alper, Nick Hurwitz, Racheal Seymour, Madeleine Coghlan, David Radcliff

Pros & Cons

Seeing the guys from 'Supernatural' pop up is a fun moment.

The documentary format has been way overdone now.
Abigail's annoying character makes her wear out her welcome quickly.
It's tiring bringing back past characters in every single episode.
Some of the side stories (like Smitty's alien abduction) feel out of place in the narrative.

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