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Nyla Harper

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"No promises. You ride with me, you ride the rollercoaster."
―Nyla Harper in Amber

Detective Nyla Harper is a main character in Seasons 2-7 on The Rookie. Her badge number is 56464 as a training officer and 3748 as a detective. She was Nolan's second training officer due to receiving a "golden ticket" and trained Thorsen before returning to a detective position. She is a Detective I who previously worked undercover for four years. She is portrayed by Mekia Cox.

Biography[]

After her undercover operation, she received a "Golden Ticket", which allows her to choose her assignment, and requested to be assigned to the Mid-Wilshire Division as a training officer. Later on in the series, it is revealed she chose Mid-Wilshire in order to be closer to her daughter. She was John Nolan's training officer following the departure of Talia Bishop from seasons 2-3. She trained Aaron Thorsen in Season 4 before returning to a detective position in Season 5 as Nolan becomes the newest Field Training Officer for the Mid-Wilshire Division. She is the ex-wife of Donovan Town and current wife of James Murray; she is also the mother of Lila Town and Leah and the stepmother of Aaron and Michael Murray.

Season 2[]

When we first meet Nyla Harper in "Warriors and Guardians", we learn that she used to be an undercover detective for four years. Sergeant Grey and the other officers are skeptical of her return to being a patrol officer, as she has a "golden ticket" which would have allowed her to pick almost any role in the LAPD. Harper is assigned to be Nolan's training officer. Grey privately confides in Nolan that he does not trust Harper, but says it "wasn't his call" to have her return to the force. During the episode, Nolan also reveals to Harper that if she's planning on making their partnership antagonistic, then she should not expect him to roll over and take it. At the end of the episode, Harper is fighting for shared custody of her daughter, Lila, with her ex-husband Donovan.

In "Tough Love", Harper hires a family lawyer, a fact that Nolan finds out later in the episode when he runs a search on the lawyer's name.

After Harper risks legal consequences by picking up her daughter from school during a nuclear missile scare, Nolan realizes that Lila is the reason for Harper's choice to return to patrol and that she's given up everything to be with her daughter again.

In "Clean Cut", Harper requests that Grey write an early annual evaluation for her because a court hearing is coming up regarding the custody of her daughter. At the end of the episode, Grey is impressed with Harper, and promises he will write a positive evaluation of her.

By the end of the season, Harper has regained shared custody of her daughter and partially credits Nolan's support for this.

Season 3[]

In the premire, Harper receives a formal reprimand for her actions supporting an unauthorized investigation into a dirty cop. Eventually, she starts preparing Officer Chen for a possible undercover assignment.

During the course of season 3, Harper begins dating again. She met Alonzo Smith, the father of her daughter's classmate, in "Sabotage". Their initial attempts to date end up being rescheduled multiple times, and it isn't until "Man of Honor" when they finally unintentionally have their first date while chaperoning their children's camping trips. In "New Blood", shortly after her date with Alonzo, she gets asked out by James Murray, who runs the community center, fine with the fact that she was also seeing someone else for now.

She starts to groom Chen for undercover work in "Triple Duty", seeing she has potential. Harper decided to truly gauge her skill by setting up a scenario of them being abducted and her getting tortured by a supposed angry dealer. However, Chen stayed strong and played the part well by maintaining her cover and protecting Harper. With that, the dealer reveals himself to be an undercover detective who is friends with Harper and remarks that she was right about Chen while they drop the act. After Chen confronts her, Harper said this was necessary to see if she would crack but didn't even after reliving her previous experience and asked if she's ready, which Chen confirm.

Season 4[]

In the first episode of Season 4, "Life and Death", Harper assists in rescuing Detective Lopez from her captors in Guatemala, and her rookie, Nolan, is formally promoted to P2.

In "Five Minutes", she becomes T.O. for rookie Aaron Thorsen, whose past experience with murder has been all too personal.

In "In the Line of Fire", Nyla lets Aaron drive their shop, showing him how demanding and how crucial it is to remain focused and avoid distractions while driving. Later, Aaron offers her his reservation to a restaurant. She immediately asks James to dinner, but when he doesn't reply, Aaron encourages her to have dinner with Alonzo instead. Both men show up to the date, with James apparently just having forgotten to send his text to Nyla. Alonzo leaves, having accepted that he was the second option, and James also leaves, no longer fine with being juggled as one of her options. Aaron calls him to the station the next evening under false pretenses to tell him that Nyla only asked Alonzo because he'd suggested it, and the pair make up. As of "Heart Beat", Nolan is still coming to grips with Bailey being married before dealing with a case involving a murderous millionaire who paid off someone to alter his appearance and give the illusion that he was incarcerated, while he fled the country but returned for money. It was Nolan who deduced his last resort and the squad were in a shootout with the millionaire until apprehending him. At the end, Bailey explains that her husband Jason abused her verbally and emotionally and that she sued for divorce but kept getting stonewalled by him.

In "A.C.H.", she goes trick-or-treating with her daughter and her ex-husband; at the end of the evening Nyla and Donovan apparently drink too much and end up in bed with each other the next morning. They mutually agree that it was a mistake and Donovan admits that he wants to marry his girlfriend. Nyla encourages him to still do it, since he loved her.

As of "Heart Beat", she and the team deal with a case involving a murderous millionaire who paid off someone to alter his appearance and give the illusion that he was incarcerated, while he fled the country but returned for money. When Nolan deduced the perp's last resort of using his bribe money, Harper supported the notion on how it was unlikely the latter's family spent it all. She and Nolan get in a shootout with the millionaire until apprehending him, with Harper saying being broke won't help him get leniency.


Nyla and James continue to build their relationship; in "End Game" James talks about "doing couple things", but when Nyla discovers she's six weeks pregnant and tells James, he fails to respond with anything but a shocked stare. Eventually they meet to talk about it and Nyla explains why having the baby is so important to her. James apologizes and they make up.

As of "Backstabbers", Nyla is heavily pregnant, confesses to James that she is tired of being called his "baby mama", and proposes to him. James is initially accepting but later confides it didn't seem right to be proposed to, since he considered it. Nyla later realized she didn't take his feelings into account and after she accepts his position, he proposes to her on the spot and she accepts. They get married at the courthouse, with all their friends in attendance.

Season 5[]

In "Labor Day", Nyla and James have moved into a new house where she is hoping to give birth. Much later, James enters the room and finds the burglar alive but with a gunshot wound, while Nyla has given birth and is holding the baby (at the same time holding the burglar at gunpoint). She casually tells her husband, "It's a girl." After the situation, she shares a moment with her family while telling Grey and Lopez that she is officially extending her maternity leave to watch her daughter, something James holds her to.

During "The List", while taking out money at a bank, Nyla and James find themselves in a middle of a robbery after identifying serial robber Todd Shelf and his associates. She explains to James how cops identify perps, using the word GROUT as an easy way to memorize each one for her team. After he does, she has him leave before it goes down. Once the robbery occurs, she quickly makes sure the silent alarm is pulled.

Season 6[]

In "The Hammer", she attends Nolan and Bailey's wedding.

During "Trouble in Paradise", she and Lopez are sent to rescue Nolan and Bailey after they are taken captive.

Season 7[]

In “Out of Pocket”, she tells Nolan and Lopez that Malvado, a supposedly mythical hitman is actually real explaining to a surprised Lopez that he has the intellect and resources that have allowed him to elude the authorities for years. Harper reveals he has a long list of victims across the border and that anyone he targets is a dead man walking and upon hearing that he's targeting Jason Wyler, advises Nolan to let him hunt Wyler.

During “Wildfire”, she continues to investigate Liam Glasser but later helps James volunteer at the shelter and things go well.

In "The Kiss", Nyla was present when James awoke and told him not to strain himself. James the kiss was discussed, and apologies were given.

In "Chaos Agent", she helped James after he had been released from the hospital, with help from a nurse. She mentioned to him that her mother was watching the kids when James is recovering from getting shot.

During "Mutiny And The Bounty", her mother calls for help but when Harper arrives with Angela Lopez, they learn that Ruth was simply being evicted by an officer. However, it becomes apparent to them that Ruth is the target of fraud, and they promise to settle this matter for Ruth. As Harper spoke to her mother, she stopped when Emilia Lopez, Lopez's mother, arrive and both detectives learn that their mothers are close friends. The two take their mothers to the station, where they explain that Ruth is a victim of a woman named Priscilla, a con artist who has been looked into by the authorities for a while, and that Ruth is not the only elderly woman she tricked, upsetting Ruth at getting played. Fortunately, Harper and Lopez tell them that they’re going to catch Priscilla in the act by using the Lopez home and Emilla as her new target, something Emilla agrees to do and happily puts on the wire. Harper lets Ruth stay at her home, as they prepare for the sting. The next day, they help Emilia get ready and noted how exciting it was. Afterwards, Priscilla is arrested, and Ruth is on the verge of getting her home back. That night Ruth speaks with Nyla and goes through a family photo album looking at pictures of her granddaughters. She apologizes for the trouble and promises to be more vigilant in the future, but her daughter tells her that is one of her best qualities: seeing the good in people.

Personality[]

As a result of being undercover for four years, Harper was originally a lone wolf, used to operating by herself. She is often unwilling to let others, including her LAPD colleagues, into her life, as she had previously operated around cartels and knows that things could go sideways at any moment.

She also had an intimidating presence and didn't care much about her new boot, John Nolan, calling him "Five Percent". Although Grey had assigned Nolan to Harper, informing him that while she could easily crush a rookie, Nolan who had shown on many occasions he could stand up to her and even call her out on something, such as when Nolan informed her in "Warriors and Guardians" that if she intended to make their partnership antagonistic, she should not expect him to accept it, which visibly surprised Harper.

Over time, though, as a result of her interactions with Nolan, Harper became more open to him, often ready to assist in any investigations and even during off-hours. Nolan and Harper developed a clear friendship over time. This softening has resulted in her being much friendlier with everyone else who she worked with, becoming very close with a few of them, such as detective Lopez. Despite this, she can still be very blunt and unforgiving, such as when Officer Juarez made an illegal stop and she asked Nolan if he knew how "dead to her" he was.

Relationships[]

Family[]

  • Ruth Harper - Mother
  • Unnamed Father
  • James Murray - Husband
  • Lila Town - Daughter
  • Leah - Daughter
  • Aaron Murray - Step-son
  • Michael Murray - Step-son

Allies[]

Enemies[]

Appearances[]

Trivia[]

  • Harper is Urban Police Rifle certified and prefers to use her rifle rather than a shotgun.
  • She reveals in "La Fiera" that her mother used to call every time she was on patrol, out of concern.
    • During Chaos Agent, she mentioned her mother watching the kids when James is recovering from getting shot, revealing they are on speaking terms.
  • She mentioned her father took advantage of her mother.
  • Harper and Nolan are the only known officers on the show to have received a "Golden Ticket"; Harper comments on this when Nolan receives his golden ticket in "Double Down".
  • She became close friends with Lopez, due to their similar tough personalities.
    • Coincidentally, neither were aware of their mothers are friends just like they are.
  • Harper often uses her own experiences to guide her fellow officers, especially the boots. This was made evident when she revealed to Chen that she was assaulted by her case officer during her period undercover as revealed in "Now and Then". She only revealed this information to help Chen process her own trauma (being buried alive by Caleb Wright).
  • Harper is known for assigning nicknames to her trainees: "Five Percent" to Nolan, "Not Nolan" to Chen, "Five Minutes" to Thorsen, and "Miss Cleo" to Juarez.
  • She used an iPhone XR for the second season to the sixth, and in the sixth she upgraded to a iPhone 15 Pro.
  • She, Celina, Bailey, and Aaron are the only main characters from the rookie that did not appear in it’s spin-off show The Rookie: Feds

Confirmed kills[]

Caleb Wright: The protégé of convicted serial killer Rosalind Dyer. Harper shot him in the abdomen in Day of Death.
Banks: A member of Boyd Taylor's heist crew. Harper shot him in the head to save Nurse Lisa, who was being held hostage by Banks after she was accidentally shot by another police officer, in Strike Back.

References[]

External links[]

THE ROOKIEe
Characters John Nolan • Wesley Evers • Celina Juarez • Nyla Harper • Bailey Nune • Angela Lopez • Wade Grey • Lucy Chen • Aaron Thorsen • Tim Bradford • Zoe Andersen • Talia Bishop • Jackson West
Cast Nathan Fillion • Shawn Ashmore • Lisseth Chavez • Mekia Cox • Jenna Dewan • Alyssa Diaz • Richard T. Jones • Melissa O'Neil • Tru Valentino • Eric Winter • Mercedes Mason • Afton Williamson • Titus Makin
Recurring characters Isabel Bradford • Ben McRee • Percy West • Jessica Russo • Nick Armstrong • Grace Sawyer • Rachel Hall • Doug Stanton • Tamara Colins • Quigley Smitty • Rodge Bronson • Miles Penn • Seth Ridley
Recurring cast Mircea Monroe • Currie Graham • Michael Beach • Sarah Shahi • Harold Perrineau • Ali Larter • Jasmine Mathews • Brandon Routh • Dylan Conrique • Brent Huff • Zander Hawley • Deric Augustine • Patrick Keleher
Seasons 1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8
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