Story explainer

Who is the leak in The Closer? The season 7 reveal explained

Answered in season 7, episode 20Reviewed Oct 22, 2026

The Closer answers it in season 7, episode 20: the 108th of its 109 episodes, one before the series finale. The question runs through most of the last season, and viewers watching on TNT waited almost exactly a year from the first hint to the answer. The name, how it comes out and what follows are below, folded shut, so you can check how close you are without having it spoiled. In a hurry? Our Essentials path gets you there without most of the one-off cases.

See where the answer comes ↓Choose your route

Choose your route

01 Mid-binge?See how far away the answer is, without the name.02 Just tell meOpen the folded answer.03 Watch only the main storyThe Essentials path, pilot to finale.

Coverage & selection notes

An explainer for The Closer’s season 7 mystery, reviewed October 22, 2026. The folded sections name the leak, the people suspected and what follows. Everything outside them stays at what season 7, episode 1 sets up. Episode numbers follow the original TNT order.

When The Closer answers it

The answer comes in season 7, episode 20, the 108th of 109 episodes. Only the series finale comes after it.

Season 7 aired in three runs: ten episodes in summer 2011, five that winter and the final six in summer 2012. The leak story moves in all three, a step every few episodes rather than every week. On first broadcast the wait from the first hint to the answer was almost exactly a year; on a binge it is fifteen episodes.

The table lists the episodes where it moves and how far each one is from the answer. It doesn’t say what happens in them.

When The Closer answers it
Episode	Run	Episodes to the answer
Season 7, episode 5	Summer 2011	15
Season 7, episode 7	Summer 2011	13
Season 7, episode 8	Summer 2011	12
Season 7, episode 10	Summer 2011, last of the run	10
Season 7, episode 11	Winter 2011	9
Season 7, episode 15	Winter 2011, last of the run	5
Season 7, episode 20	Summer 2012	The answer

The setup, as season 7 begins

In season 7, episode 1, Brenda learns she is being sued. The family of a man from a season 6 case brings a wrongful-death suit against her and the LAPD, and the department starts its own inquiry into how she handled it.

That suit is where the leak story starts, although episode 1 itself doesn’t mention a leak. How it surfaces and who is behind it are in the folded sections below.

Watch only the main story

BingePath’s Essentials path for The Closer runs from the pilot to the finale. It keeps the episodes that carry the show’s long stories, including the season 6 case behind the lawsuit and every season 7 episode in the table above, with notes that stay hidden until you reach them. Most one-off cases are left out, so expect the squad’s lives to jump between stops.

The answer Spoilers — open to reveal

The leak is Ann Mason, Gabriel’s girlfriend.

She is a law student, and she was planted. Peter Goldman, the lawyer suing Brenda for the Baylor family, arranged for her to meet Gabriel at church and paid about $60,000 toward her law-school loans in return for whatever she could learn about him and Major Crimes.

Gabriel was the source without knowing it. He talked to her the way you talk to someone you have been seeing for a year, including about his doubts over how Brenda handled Baylor, and she passed it on.

She is on screen in two episodes only: season 7, episode 18, where the squad meets her, and episode 20, where she is found out.

How it comes out Spoilers — open to reveal

It comes out in episode 20. Pope tells Brenda that Raydor has found the leak, but holds the name back until later. When Raydor sends for Gabriel, Brenda fears it is him.

Waiting for him is Ann, in tears, and Gabriel learns that Goldman set her up. Her account: Goldman told her Gabriel was a crooked cop, her feelings for him turned real, and she kept going because she was scared he would find out. Gabriel ends it.

He then owns up to the squad. Provenza forgives him first. Flynn accepts the apology but tells him to put in for a transfer. Sanchez won’t answer him at all.

Gabriel offers Brenda his resignation, and she won’t take it. She says the fault is hers for not listening to him about Baylor, and hands back his badge and gun.

None of the recaps we read say what evidence led Raydor to Ann.

The lawsuit, start to finish Spoilers — open to reveal

It starts in season 6, episode 8. Brenda can’t charge the gang member Turrell Baylor after he admits, under immunity, to a double murder, so she has him dropped back in his own neighbourhood with no protection, and his gang kills him.

His family sues Brenda and the LAPD, with Goldman as their lawyer, and the case is under way when season 7 opens. In episode 5 Goldman subpoenas everyone in Major Crimes except Gabriel. Brenda hires her own lawyer, Gavin Baker, in episode 6, and in episode 9 weighs a settlement offer, which Raydor and Gavin point out wouldn’t stop further suits.

Episode 10 looks like a win: a judge dismisses the case. Goldman files a federal civil-rights suit on the spot, built on older cases in which suspects Brenda dealt with ended up dead, plus her pursuit of Phillip Stroh.

Episode 15 ends it. Brenda is dropped from the suit, the city settles, and the deal brings in a ‘Johnson Rule’ that bars officers from leaving a civilian somewhere they know is dangerous. She never gets her day in court, and from episode 16 the rule with her name on it weakens her standing in the department.

Who people suspected Spoilers — open to reveal

On screen, the squad’s eyes go to Gabriel from episode 5, when he is the only one in Major Crimes that Goldman doesn’t subpoena. When Raydor sends for him in episode 20, Brenda fears the same.

Off screen, the guessing ran for a year. The writer Paul Levinson, blogging as the season aired, put Pope first, then Raydor, then Fritz, and doubted it was Gabriel or Taylor. Levinson’s readers added Taylor, Buzz, Flynn and Provenza, Tao, Brenda’s own lawyer Gavin, and the theory that there was no leak at all. TVLine’s recapper backed Taylor, and the Livingston Post’s writer, days before the final six began, leaned towards Gabriel.

Ann was hard to guess. The leak starts long before she appears and she is on screen in two episodes, and some viewers, Levinson among them, felt that left little chance to suspect her. Still, one of his readers named Gabriel’s girlfriend the day after episode 18 aired, and was right.

Who people suspected
Suspect	Who they are	Why they were suspected	Verdict
Gabriel	Brenda’s most loyal sergeant	The only one in Major Crimes not subpoenaed (episode 5)	The source, without knowing it
Pope	Brenda’s boss, interim chief from episode 2	Levinson’s first pick	Not the leak
Raydor	The captain investigating Brenda	Levinson’s second pick	Not the leak; she finds it
Fritz	Brenda’s husband, the FBI’s liaison to the LAPD	Levinson’s third pick	Not the leak
Taylor	Brenda’s long-time rival	Named by blog commenters and TVLine’s recapper	Not the leak
Ann Mason	Gabriel’s girlfriend, a law student	First seen in episode 18, too late for most guesses	The leak

Common mix-ups Spoilers — open to reveal

“It was Gabriel.” Half right. The information came from him, but he never knew he was passing it on. Ann did the leaking.
It wasn’t Raydor. She is the one who finds the leak.
It wasn’t Pope or Taylor, whatever the fan theories said, and it wasn’t anyone else in the squad: not Sanchez, Flynn, Provenza, Tao or Buzz.
It wasn’t a leak to the press. Everything went to Goldman, the lawyer suing Brenda.
The leak outlives the lawsuit. The suit is settled in episode 15, and the leak isn’t found until episode 20.
Ann isn’t a season-long presence on screen. She has been with Gabriel for about a year by episode 18, but that is the first time we see her. Some recaps spell her name Anne.

What happens next Spoilers — open to reveal

One episode is left, and Gabriel is in it. When Brenda leaves the LAPD at the end of the finale to run the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Bureau of Investigation, he goes with her.

Baylor stays with Brenda too. In the finale, the memory of that case shapes the choice she makes at the climax.

Major Crimes begins the same night, with Raydor running the division. Gabriel, like Brenda and Pope, doesn’t carry over.