I’ve been rewatching Castle since season 1 these days and I have a theory. For me, The Rookie was supposed to be Castle’s plot for season 9.
Let’s think: the plot about Loksat was never fully resolved. Chris Polaha (Caleb) character was killed, Castle and Beckett survived and they had three beautiful children and that’s it. No decent closures, no further explanations, nothing. They just improvised a cute ending for the show so the fans could be in peace, but nothing was really that great.
But what if, by the end of season eight, they kill Chris Polaha character and instead of Castle AND Beckett surviving, only Castle survives, making him a widow by the start of season 9? That would make Castle thirsty for revenge, starting the cycle all over again. Castle starts looking for the person who killed Kate but he’s shut down by the NYPD because he’s not with the police anymore and being a PI is not helping him. So he applies for the police academy, starting again as a rookie so he can finally have access to the files and can start investigating Kate’s murder again. Just like Beckett did with her mother’s murder.
Think about it: Stana was cut from the cast by the end of season 8 and the shooting scene on their apartment was already shot when the cancelation came - they had to change the ending last minute, creating the children’s scene on a rush. It is more than probable that Beckett was going to die on that shooting scene, and since Nathan’s contract was renewed, he was going to be back as Castle again.
The Rookie is a tv show created by Alexi Hawley. Alexi was Castle’s executive producer/co-showrunner on that disastrous season 8. For me, the Rookie was the plot for Castle’s 9th season, but once Castle was canceled after all the requests from the fans because of Stana’s exit, Alexi offered ABC a show that could resemble Castle, with its plot and also giving Nathan a show, since he was still under a contract.
The Rookie is based on a real story of the eldest man to enter the LAPD and a sad incident in his life revives his dream to became a cop. Ok, you might tell me there’s nothing to do with Castle. But think it through, how they were going to keep Javier Esposito and Kevin Ryan on the cast (Jon and Seamus contracts were renewed at the time) and connect with Castle’s PI story without Beckett? And it would be a perfect cycle to Castle do exactly what Beckett did when her mother was killed. He would honor her and keep her chase for the people who started all that by becoming a cop.
To be honest, to this day, I’m still very curious about what happened on the backstages of Castle. It was one of the biggest successes for ABC at the time, and they didn’t want to lose their gold mine, but with the rumors of fights offscreen things were in a bad shape. I remember seeing a tweet saying that there was a show that had the two main cast members that hated each other so much that the writer’s room was having much much trouble finding ways to keep them apart on screen. For me, it was Castle. So, yeah, that was my theory. The more I think, the more I believe The Rookie was supposed to be Castle’s 9th season plot.
