Sumith Prasad
The fifth season of ABC’s police procedural show ‘The Rookie’ sees the introduction of Celina Juarez, who joins the Mid-Wilshire station of LAPD as a new rookie. Celina becomes a police officer to help her community after witnessing the abduction and eventual death of her younger sister Blanca when the former was just six years old. Although the police did try their best to find the abductor, they failed, which affected the rookie severely. After becoming an officer, she tries to reopen Blanca’s case, which leads her to the killer of her sister. If you are intrigued about the same, here’s what we can share! SPOILERS AHEAD.
Joel Chambers: A Father’s Grief Turned Deadly
In the nineteenth episode of the fifth season, Celina visits the grave of her sister Blanca since it’s her birthday. After the same, John Nolan and the rookie start investigating an abduction case of a six-year-old girl named Olivia, taken from the front yard of her house, similar to what happened to Blanca. Nolan and Celina realize that the person they are trying to find can be the killer of the latter’s sister as well. While the investigation progresses, a police officer named Joel Chambers arrives at the scene and talks to Celina. She introduces Joel to Nolan and lets her training officer know that the old officer has been her role model since he tried his best to find Blanca.
However, Officer Joel Chambers killed Blanca. Joel’s family included his partner and a daughter. When his daughter was six years old, his partner won her custody, which paved the way for the separation of the father and daughter. The traumatic incident challenged Joel mentally, leading him to commit a series of abductions. Joel didn’t abduct six-year-old girls to kill them. Rather, in his mind, he wanted to “protect” them by separating them from their parents who didn’t deserve to become parents in the first place. Whether it be Blanca’s mother or Olivia’s, they did not provide their kids with a safe home environment to grow.
Joel abducted these kids to provide a “safe” environment to grow. In his mind, the officer didn’t deserve to lose the custody of his own daughter. After the incident, he started to fail to tolerate parents who didn’t prioritize the well-being of their kids, which led him to abduct his victims. Before abducting Blanca and Olivia, he had witnessed how their parents lived and failed to offer favorable conditions for them to grow. Joel kidnapped Blanca thinking he could be a father to her. He hurt Blanca and the other kids when they didn’t accept him as their guardian. They cried to go home, which offended and infuriated the police officer.
In Blanca and other victims’ cases, Joel hurt them for wanting to return to their parents who didn’t take care of them instead of living with him, who wanted to nurture them. Joel failed to realize that he cannot become a father by force and replace his daughter by abducting other girls. Even after hurting the same kids, including Blanca, he tried to act like a father. That was the reason why he visited Blanca every day when she was hospitalized before her death. He took advantage of Celina’s sadness to become a father figure in front of her as well despite causing the death of her beloved sister.
Due to John Nolan’s attention to detail, Celina finally receives closure concerning her sister Blanca’s death. But she has to accept that she became a police officer inspired by the killer of her loved one. Joel, on the other hand, gets killed by Tim Bradford since the former was aiming a gun at him.
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