We’re gonna be honest with you, Ted Rawls. As your role on the cold case team evolved from Friend of the Councilman and Cop Cosplayer to Guy Who Is Enlightened, But Still Kind of a Dunce, we started thinking you might be part of the killings. Your age ruled you out as the direct doer in the cold cases. But what if your friendship with Councilman Pearlman was all part of some twisted copycat ruse? It was a theory that got us pretty far out on our surfboards, but then it got crushed by an even bigger wave, that of the unlikely TV twist. And now, in the season finale of Ballard, you’re laying on an EMT gurney after being shot point-blank by Gary Pearlman, the councilman’s dad and the actual serial killer. We’re sorry, Ted Rawls! 

“The murders we’ve been investigating – they were committed by your father.” While the LAPD fans out to search for Gary, it falls to Detective Ballard to tell Jake Pearlman the news. He’s dazed, says he’ll suspend his campaign. (This also means Nelson Hastings, the councilman’s political toady and another nowhere character on Ballard, officially ends in TV Nowheresville.)  The question of how her father wasn’t linked to Sarah Pearlman’s murder through DNA is also resolved via TV twist – it turns out Gary wasn’t Sarah Pearlman’s biological father. And while the killer hits Union Station in Los Angeles to set off a cluster bomb of potential escape routes – train tickets, bus fare, and rental cars – the team assembles at the hospital in support of Ted. Where the prognosis, as they say on TV, is negative. 

It’s another cop funeral scene for Ballard, which stresses that volunteer officers are buried with full honors because, as Ballard says in her eulogy for Rawls, volunteers are “part of the world they’re trying to improve.” Losing one of her own has also galvanized the detective’s feelings on her own career. If the Sarah Pearlman case was their chance to honor her spirit and jell as a team, then the serial killer scoring a hit against their ranks has made Renée Ballard more committed than ever to the cold case unit she built from committed outsiders.

So where did Gary Pearlman run? Not to Bakersfield, or San Francisco, or points east, or down to the border. No, the serial killer whose motivation was women standing up for themselves goes after the woman who stood up for herself when no one else would. “A certain kind of woman,” as Gary would call his victims, who in standing up for her career and very dignity beat back Olivas’s unaccountability and destroyed Gary Pearlman’s empire of toxic male psychopathy. Ballard’s alone when the power goes out in the cold case unit. But as an armed Gary stalks and taunts her from within the stacks of cardboard boxes, she uses the darkness to find her advantage. A heavy kettlebell, lifted from a desk and swung overhead, which Ballard uses to crush the serial killer’s gun hand. Ted Rawls, notching the assist from beyond the grave.

Decider has heard nothing definite on a Ballard Season 2, but the series has been embraced by new Ballard fans and old Bosch heads alike, so we’re banking on a renewal. And before the first season concludes, there’s a bit more business, including time for a final visit from Harry Bosch. Taking in the police tape lining her destroyed office, Bosch grins. “If anyone ever takes me out, I hope you catch the case.” But he also leaves on a darkly-tinged note. The lack of a strong woman figure in Gary Pearlman’s life, his being blamed by his father for the death of his mother, inserted into our society another killer. Or, just the kind of person Bosch has been running down for years. “The world gains another psychopath…” 

Later, at Ballard’s home in Malibu, the surfboard she built in tribute to her father is finally ready, its sun-over-surf paint job just waiting to hit the water. But as she paddles out to the breakers, she’s called in by a second visit from Bosch. Another character from his former series exists in this one, and Detective Renée Ballard is about to be very angry with Honey “Money” Chandler. The District Attorney of Los Angeles is definitely bringing the cops-and-cartels corruption case to trial – minus one name. The DA made a deal with Detective Robert Olivas. And he’s gonna walk.  

“You think the world is fair, but it’s just not.” We know Olivas is dirty as hell. We know he sexually assaulted both Renée Ballard and Zamira Parker. But we also know he’s a talker and a smooth operator. And as a smug Olivas tells Ballard when she storms up to his house, we also know the world is very unfair. They argue. She suggests that even if he won’t be prosecuted, even if he somehow got away with it again, his wife and family still left him and his career is over. (“My career might be in the basement – but at least it’s not in a fucking box.”) Which as a comeback would retain more of its inherent cold-bloodedness if Ballard wasn’t arrested for Olivas’ murder a few scenes later. How’s that for unfair? 

With her cold cases closed and the police corruption trial set to kick off, this is the real cliffhanger for a Ballard Season 2. This time it’s not Olivas but Ballard being stuffed into the back of a squad car, and the arresting officers say she’s a murderer. (It’s also a final TV twist akin to Season 3 of The Lincoln Lawyer, but he doesn’t exist in this universe.) We didn’t see her commit any murders, but then again we didn’t see her not commit any murders, and there was at least one gun drawn during her argument with Olivas. As Detective Renée Ballard’s eyes catch the rearview mirror of the police cruiser – significantly, giving nothing away – it’s clear the embattled detective will have to rely on her hand-picked crew of outsiders more than ever. How much pull does a volunteer cold case team have when it’s investigating an alleged murder by its leader? Maybe we’ll find out in whatever a second season of Ballard looks like. 

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.