A dream team come true! For the first time ever, all three NCIS squads unite to solve a crime, and this one is personal: Agents from the three bases of operation — Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Pearl Harbor — have gathered in the nation’s capital for the retirement of their much-loved Federal Law Enforcement Training Center professor, who, shockingly, commits suicide. Or was it murder?
“[They learn] he had a secret dark past,” says executive producer Christopher J. Waild, “and it’s connected to some of our main characters.” He previews the three exciting hours of NCIS, NCIS: Hawai’i, and NCIS: Los Angeles.
D.C. Turf Wars
A common goal doesn’t make everyone instant besties. “Each team does things differently. There’s professional camaraderie but also one-upmanship,” the EP reveals.
Butting heads on NCIS: forensic specialist Kasie Hines (Diona Reasonover) and visiting ex-SEAL Sam Hanna (LL Cool J). “She’s incredibly protective of not only her team but her space. Sam, who’s larger than life, has his way of doing things,” says Waild, who also teases a “TNT” rematch of NCIS’s Wilmer Valderrama and Hawai‘i’s Vanessa Lachey: “You put Nick Torres and Jane Tennant in a room together, there’s sparks!”
On the action front, he adds, look for “a shoot-out at a location the audience will recognize immediately.”
Kidnapping on Oahu
“In Hawaii, the mystery deepens,” Waild says. “They’re uncovering a connection to a mysterious hitman. The more they dig, the more heat comes down.”
Tennant, Hanna, and D.C. medical examiner Jimmy Palmer (Brian Dietzen) are captured by a woman claiming she’s CIA and demanding intel. “Jimmy is not necessarily used to being kidnapped, not necessarily trained for it, but he has a very specific special set of skills that help him through that situation,” Waild hints.
D.C. head honcho Alden Parker (Gary Cole), along with the Oahu team, learn that an asset who could be connected to overseas assassinations has arrived on the island. In L.A. (whiplash warning!), boss Hollace Kilbride (Gerald McRaney) goes missing!
Michael Yarish/CBS
L.A. Showdown
“It’s all hands on deck, a race to catch up with who’s behind this before somebody else dies,” Waild says. Searching for Kilbride, his agents Devin Rountree (Caleb Castille) and Fatima Namazi (Medalion Rahimi) are ambushed.
Seems there’s a $200,000 bounty on all the agents, and cartels, hitmen, gangs and psychopaths want it. “The question becomes, why are we being hunted?” Waild explains. He promises a final explosive action sequence in the Mojave Desert “where everything we’ve learned and the relationships that have been built up through these three hours come together.”
Whew! When can we do it again?
NCIS, NCIS: Hawai’i, and NCIS: Los Angeles, Three-Hour Crossover, Monday, January 9, 8/7c, CBS
This is an excerpt from TV Guide Magazine’s 2023 Preview issue. For more inside scoop on what’s coming to TV and streaming in the new year, pick up the issue, on newsstands Thursday, December 29.
