The Closer season 7: summary & episode guide

Season 7 opens with Brenda being sued. Turrell Baylor’s family blames her and the LAPD for his death in season 6, Captain Raydor is put on her conduct, and Chief Delk’s new org chart would make Taylor her boss and push Pope out to a traffic command. Then Delk collapses at the end of the first episode and is dead by the second. The mayor makes Pope interim chief, Delk’s shake-up dies with him, and Pope orders Raydor to keep her audit of Major Crimes running. [1][17][2]

Brenda spends the summer run ducking the audit and fighting the suit. Peter Goldman, the family’s lawyer, subpoenas everyone in Major Crimes except Gabriel, and the squad notices. Brenda hires a flashy former city attorney, Gavin Baker, and Raydor warns her she has a mole: the other side knows what was said in the car before Baylor was let go. A settlement offer gives her pause. Then a judge throws the case out, and Goldman answers at once with a federal civil-rights suit built on her record, from older cases in which suspects she dealt with ended up dead to her pursuit of Phillip Stroh. [1][3][5]

The winter run settles that the leak is real: Raydor announces she is leaving for an outside job, and Goldman knows almost at once. Brenda’s parents come for the holidays, and her father, Clay, tells her he has cancer. The winter finale goes back to Baylor. A former member of his gang turns up dead with Goldman’s card on him, Brenda and Fritz bring in the men behind Baylor’s killing, and the suit is settled. Brenda is dropped from it, but the deal gives the LAPD a ‘Johnson Rule’ against leaving a civilian somewhere officers know is dangerous, and she never gets her day in court. [1][2][6]

The final six bring back Phillip Stroh, now defending an accused rapist. Brenda accuses him in open court, causes a mistrial, and finds Pope siding with the DA’s office and the new rule counting against her. Gabriel’s girlfriend, Ann, meets the squad. Brenda’s parents stay with her during Clay’s treatment, and her mother, Willie Rae, keeps trying to tell her something; Brenda keeps putting it off, and at the end of episode 19 finds that Willie Rae has died in her sleep. Back early from the funeral in episode 20, Brenda learns that Pope has saved her job by agreeing to make Taylor assistant chief and to let a deputy DA watch over Major Crimes, and that Raydor has found the leak. It is Ann, planted by Goldman, with Gabriel as her unknowing source. [1][3][7][16]

Key connections to revisit

These checkpoints explain the recap; they are not a complete watch path.

A 911 call starts it. Rusty Beck, a teenage street hustler, sees a masked man carrying a body in Griffith Park, pulls the mask off and phones the police, but he will only name the man if they find the mother who abandoned him. Brenda ties Stroh to one of the victims, draws him out by making Rusty’s call public, and when Stroh taunts her in custody about her mother, she attacks him in an elevator. The blood and skin she takes from him are used to tell Stroh his DNA is on the mask, a move meant to rattle him rather than stand up in court, and she is suspended for the attack. [1][4][8][14]

Stroh comes for Rusty that night, while Fritz is in Washington, and gets into the house with a knife. Brenda shoots him. Rusty begs her to finish him; with Baylor on her mind she phones for help instead, and when Stroh offers to confess she has no wish to hear it. He lives, and is arrested. Brenda is cleared over the shooting but reprimanded for the elevator, and Taylor’s promotion to assistant chief goes ahead. She retires from the LAPD and takes over the LA County District Attorney’s Bureau of Investigation, bringing Gabriel with her. The squad sends her off with a handbag full of Ding Dongs, Pope and Taylor hand the division to Raydor, and Major Crimes picks up the same night. [1][4][3][14][15]