Sumith Prasad
The fifth season of ABC’s police procedural series ‘The Rookie’ follows the police officers of LAPD’s Mid-Wilshire station as they solve several intricate cases, ranging from Elijah Stone’s drug dealings to rookie officer Celina Juarez’s sister Blanca’s murder. The officers deal with the most puzzling case of the lot in the fifth season finale as officers Aaron Thorsen and Celina Juarez get attacked by three masked men. While their superiors try to find them, more masked men attack them, including John Nolan, Tim Bradford, Lucy Chen, Nyla Harper, etc. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Masked Men: Hired by Vengeful Criminal Moran
In the fifth season finale, Aaron Thorsen and Celina Juarez encounter three masked men in an alley. One of them shoots Aaron down and another one hits Celina at her head to make her unconscious. After they are hospitalized, more masked men attack other LAPD officers. A highly infamous international criminal attacks Nolan and his fiancée Bailey. Another masked man abducts Harper’s child but leaves the latter in the garden of her house to startle the detective. Lucy and Tim have to face an entire battalion of masked men who try to hurt them severely. Although Wade Grey and others suspect personal vengeance, the masked men are just hired individuals who are unrelated to the LAPD specifically, except for Luke Moran.
The masked men are the ones Moran hired to hurt the LAPD officers. He was arrested by the officers of the Mid-Wilshire station for a non-violent crime. Regardless of the nature of the crime, Moran was imprisoned for ninety days, which were nothing but the worst days of his life. Moran was humiliated and pushed to his limits at the prison, nearly making him kill himself. Although his sentence wasn’t comparatively long, ninety days were more than enough for the criminal to break down in every sense and consider dying. Moran seemingly hired infamous and possibly highly trained criminals for the assignment and turned them into mysterious masked men.
It is unlikely that any other masked man except for Moran has a connection with the Mid-Wilshire station or the officers working at the place. Moran, however, isn’t the mastermind behind the whole predicament. Moran was hired and funded by the anonymous man who appears in the closing scene of the episode. Moran hired the masked men and used them to attack the LAPD officers under the instruction of this unrevealed individual. From his words, it is clear that the predicament involving the masked men was executed to distract the LAPD from the man’s “real target.” He wants to take advantage of the chaos caused by the masked men to commit another crime, which is seemingly expected to be much more severe than the attacks on the police officers.
Masked Men Distract LAPD for Hidden Agenda
When the masked men attack the LAPD officers, the police department uses all its resources and personnel to capture and contain them. Little does the department know that a highly efficient criminal is waiting to commit an astounding crime while the police force prioritizes capturing the masked men. The anonymous man chooses Moran because of his history with LAPD, which ensures that the police would track the attacks back to him. The man uses Moran and his need for vengeance as a front to the crime he wants to commit.
The unrevealed man masterminded the attacks with enough tracks for the police officers to trace. He must have known that the LAPD would only exhaust its resources when they are making progress in the investigation. That must be the reason why the masked men offer a riddle and traceable masks to the officers, which lead them initially to Roy Gracco and eventually to Moran, especially when the anonymous man has the money to hire a highly expensive international killer.
Read More: Does Nolan Die in The Rookie? Theories
