The fast-paced first season of Ballard kept the TV universe established by Bosch and Bosch: Legacy humming. Driving from her introduction alongside Titus Welliver’s Harry Bosch in the Legacy finale, and inspired by the characters’ adventures on the page – Michael Connelly, author of the original books, is also an executive producer of this small screen universe – Renée Ballard was brought to life by Maggie Q, who plays the veteran LAPD detective with lots of stoicism, but also plenty of compassion for victims of the cold cases she works.

The show’s first season saw Ballard and her team of volunteers investigate the unsolved murder of a LA city councilman’s sister, and determine the name and location of a John Doe who was last seen holding a crying baby. But these cold cases, among the hundreds filed away in the forgotten police department basement where Ballard and her team work, soon spooled out in surprising and dangerous directions. 

While the LAPD brass and its internal boys’ club culture were busy underfunding her cold case unit and disrespecting her professionally and personally as a survivor of sexual assault in the workplace, the department totally missed evidence of a serial killer at work in the city. It fell to Ballard to track the evidence and determine his identity – a real TV twist shocker there – while she processed her own trauma and, oh yeah, uncovered a group of cops in league with a violent Mexican drug cartel.

So who was the serial killer in Ballard? How did the cop corruption she discovered connect to Ballard’s own assault? And how did the season conclude with Detective Ballard suddenly in handcuffs? Decider has all your answers in this Ballard Season 1: Ending Explained.

***All units be advised: major spoilers incoming for Season 1 of Ballard***

When Councilman Jake Pearlman (Noah Bean) pledged to fund up the LAPD’s cold case unit, it was with a personal caveat: that it first solve the 2001 murder of his younger sister Sarah, who was killed at home in her bedroom. In dealing with Detective Ballard, Pearlman and his staff toadies always seemed more concerned with optics and political momentum than her actual investigative work. But Ballard and her team took all that in stride, and soon their office whiteboard was popping. Not only with potential suspects, but with a string of murders connected to Sarah’s through a similar MO. Ballard almost couldn’t believe what a box of loose clues had revealed. “We might have a serial killer on our hands.”

Together with Thomas Laffont (John Carroll Lynch), her first partner way back in her previous post at LAPD Robbery-Homicide, volunteer officers Zamira Parker (Courtney Taylor) and Ted Rawls (Michael Mosley), researcher Colleen Hatteras (Rebecca Field) and Gen-Z intern Martina Castro (Victoria Moroles), Ballard established 14 victims of the unknown killer. All were women, yet they did not share similarities of age, ethnicity, or appearance. Eventually, and usually while ruminating over the case as she built a new surfboard at her sweet beachside pad in Malibu, Detective Ballard determined the toxic thinking that drove the killer. All of his victims were women who were advancing in their lives and careers. “What if our killer was punishing these women for stepping out of their place?”

Punished for stepping out of their perceived place? It hit home for Renée Ballard, whose own demotion from RHD to running cold cases came after she officially accused Robert Olivas (Ricardo Chavira), her fellow Robbery-Homicide detective, of attempted sexual assault. 

Through twists and turns typical of a police procedural, Ballard and the team built their case. They found a witness, Naomi Bennett (Michola Briana White), the only survivor of the serial killer’s attacks. And Naomi’s reconstructed memories, together with further DNA analysis of the evidence, dropped a kind of “Only on TV” bombshell: it was Councilman Jake Pearlman’s own father, Gary Pearlman (Kevin Dunn), who was hiding in plain sight as the serial killer. Gary murdered women because he saw them achieving their career goals, and becoming financially independent. He murdered Sarah, his own daughter, because she confronted him about what she thought was his marital infidelity. Sarah had found the mementos he kept from each victim – a pair of heels, a tube of lipstick. But the twist went further: Sarah wasn’t even Gary’s biological daughter, because he really did have an affair. 

On the run from the law, Gary Pearlman holed up in a dark corner of the cold case unit HQ and waited for Detective Ballard. And he would have killed the woman in charge who finally exposed his decades of toxic murdering, had she not smashed every bone in his hand with a kettlebell. 

Speaking of toxicity, we knew something was up between Ballard and Detective Olivas right away in Episode 1 of the series, when she shut down his showboating visit to the cold case unit. Bury the hatchet? Yeah dude, sure. “I plan on burying it your goddamn back.”

While Ballard worked through the trauma of Olivas trying to assault her, only for him to keep his RHD seniority and skate on even the prospect of accountability, she also learned he attacked Zamira Parker. And Parker’s sexual assault, coupled with months of gaslighting by Olivas, led her to quit the force, even after making detective with RHD.

As a smart, surehanded volunteer officer with the cold case unit, and through sharing their personal traumas, Zamira Parker formed a bond with Renée Ballard. But they also became resigned to Olivas getting away with his bullshit. “You’re a monster,” Parker told him in Episode 6 after directly accusing him of rape. “You hide it well, but I see you.” A powerful line, made all the more frustrating when Olivas didn’t even deny his monster-ness.     

All of which is why it wasn’t exactly shocking when Robert Olivas was revealed to be an even bigger piece of shit. The rapist detective was also a dirty cop, deeply connected to the cops-and-cartels, guns-and-cash corruption ring uncovered by Ballard through her cold case work. When Harry Bosch, making one of his Ballard cameo drop-ins, showed Ballard what he’d found, all she could do was stew. Olivas, bad all over, was just out here walking around. “You gotta be fucking kidding me.”  

Exposed by the sound investigative work of Ballard and her team, and with the assist from Bosch, Olivas was eventually arrested for his role in the corruption ring. But when the case went to the DA’s office, another Bosch Universe cameo came for Ballard’s frustrations. District Attorney Honey “Money” Chandler (Mimi Rogers) told the detective she let Olivas walk free after he agreed to spill inside information. When a rightfully angry Ballard confronted Olivas at his home, he was all sneering arrogance behind his patronizing smile. “You think the world is fair. But it’s just not.” 

Season 1 of Ballard ends with a nighttime hang in Malibu’s Paradise Cove disturbed by lights and sirens. It’s not like the series showed us Ballard shooting Olivas, though she did draw on him when he reached for her during their argument. But nevertheless, an LAPD black-and-white arrives to haul her off to jail for the murder of Robert Olivas. 

It’s a pretty big cliffhanger for the titular character of a series to close out its first season in cuffs. And neither Decider nor Maggie Q herself – “shows are so expendable” – knows if Ballard Season 2 is even happening. But the entertaining first season of Ballard coalesced a team around its independently-minded detective, a team that’ll now have to spring their leader from the hoosegow while they tackle more of the LAPD’s many, many cold cases.   

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.