The Dark Side

**"The Dark Side"** is the tenth episode of the second season on *The Rookie*. This is the thirtieth episode of the series overall.

## Summary

Officer Nolan and team are charged with escorting a notorious female serial killer to the graves of her previously unrecovered victims. However, when they arrive, they unearth even more than they expected. Meanwhile, Officer Chen meets a seemingly perfect man who sparks her interest, and Officer Lopez worries about Wesley as his PTSD continues to worsen.

## Plot

Rosalind Dyer, a convicted serial killer, arrives at the Mid-Wilshire station after making a deal with the assistant district attorney Sean Del Monte in order to find the bodies of her victims that were never recovered.

She is revealed to have a past with Nick Armstrong, as Armstrong was on the task force that had arrested her five years earlier. Armstrong later reveals that his wife had died while he was trying to catch Dyer, and that it still haunted him to that day.
Dyer insists that Armstrong go with the other officers to Griffith Park to accompany her. Armstrong, disgusted with the arrangement as he believes she is jerking the police around, argues with Del Monte as they walk with Dyer through Griffith Park.

During their search, a man named Peter Mason attempts to murder Rosalind as she had killed his wife. Sergeant Wade Grey arrives with backup, and Nyla Harper convinces the group that they need to continue with the search. They recover Rosalind's first victim, but also find another body, one that was much fresher. Everyone looks back at Dyer, and she says, "Don't look at me, I've been in prison for the last five years".

At the police station, Dyer tells John Nolan that the LAPD was going to find two more bodies at the next gravesite, which proves to be true as the team recovers two more bodies at Rosalind's second gravesite, with the second body once again being much fresher. They determine that the first body was killed exactly six months prior, and that the second new body was killed three months prior; each body has a tattoo with the date of their death on their skin. The police then determine that the next victim was going to be killed that day.

Nolan talks to Dyer in the processing room, but Dyer still refuses to give him any information about the third victim. Dyer then tells Nolan to ask Armstrong if catching her was worth it.

With Dyer being uncooperative, the team is forced to find the third victim on their own, which Nolan and Harper succeed in doing. However, the killer manages to escape before they can catch him.

Meanwhile, Wesley Evers is continuing to spiral out of control in the aftermath of his stabbing, suffering severe PTSD from the incident. He lies to Angela Lopez, telling her he was at work when he was really at a bar drinking. Lopez later returns home to find Evers passed out on the couch, having overdosed on pills before she is able to wake him up.

Later that night, Lucy Chen meets with a man named Caleb Wright at a bar after Tim Bradford encourages her to go out with him to relieve the stress of the Dyer case. Unfortunately, Wright is revealed to be Dyer's accomplice after kidnapping Chen and putting her in the trunk of his car. Wright had killed a zoo employee named Bryan Coleman, who was originally believed to be Dyer's accomplice, and had buried his body under a cabin. He had also stolen Coleman's identity in order to kill his victims at the cabin quietly and undetected.

To be continued...

## Cast

### Main

* Nathan Fillion as John Nolan
* Mekia Cox as Nyla Harper
* Alyssa Diaz as Angela Lopez
* Richard T. Jones as Wade Grey
* Titus Makin as Jackson West
* Melissa O'Neil as Lucy Chen
* Eric Winter as Tim Bradford

### Guest starring

* Shawn Ashmore as Wesley Evers
* Michael Trucco as ADA Sean Del Monte
* Annie Wersching as Rosalind Dyer
* Michael Cassidy as Caleb Wright
* Jeffrey D. Sams as Dr. Solomon Lowell
* Julian Acosta as Sgt. Antonio Hernandez
* Natalia Del Riego as Nora Valdez
* Harold Perrineau as Nick Armstrong

### Co-starring

* Freedom Bridgewater as Peter Mason
* Ari Welkom as Criminal
* Tom Riordan as Lead Operator

## Trivia

* Four of the guest stars in this episode previously appeared on *Castle* (Michael Trucco, Annie Wersching, Michael Cassidy, and Julian Acosta.)
* Wersching's character Rosalind Dyer describes a time where she "literally peeled a woman's face off". This is a reference to her character on *Castle*, Dr. Kelly Nieman, who was a plastic surgeon and worked with serial killer Jerry Tyson as his partner in crime and girlfriend.
* When Harper mentions that the cabin has a "Ted Kaczynski vibe", she's referring to the serial bomber known as the Unabomber, who lived in an isolated cabin while sending out mail bombs in the 1980s and 1990s.
* The book in which Chen finds the clue at the prison is *The Valley of Horses* by Jean M. Auel.
* This episode starts on the night of December 6, 2019 and continues until the night of December 8th.
* The uniforms worn by the California Department of Corrections was not even close to the real look. Not an error. Officers do not have to tell the suspects why they are being arrested prior to being arrested. They do eventually but not before so this was not an error.

## Quotes

* You put something in my drink... - Lucy Chen