‘NCIS: Hawai’i’ Reveals Sam’s Secret — How Long Is He Staying on the Island?
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for NCIS: Hawai’i Season 3 Episode 5 “Serve and Protect.”]
Well, there’s no need for Ernie (Jason Antoon) to continue to sneak around trying to get answers about why Sam (LL COOL J) is really on the island: NCIS: Hawai’i reveals what the OSP agent has been up to and why he’s been so secretive.
In “Serve and Protect,” Sam has Jane (Vanessa Lachey) meet him in the war room and turns on the SCIF (sensitive compartmented information facility) mode. NCIS Elite is his cool new action team, with those with a special set of skills taking on off-the-books missions no one is supposed to know about. (“NCIS Elite—watch that be the next new part of the franchise in the world,” Yasmine Al-Bustami quips to TV Insider.)
Sam’s not trying to enlist Jane (he knows she’d never accept) but rather needs her help with someone in Elite’s custody, Alexi Volkoff, to get him to give up his labs all over the world. Though Sam blindfolds her for the trip to the secure facility, she figure out where they are easily. She also knows exactly how to get Volkoff to talk (offering him his legacy versus someone else coming in and using his work as their own), and just like that, Elite has the locations of three labs. By the end of the episode, Elite’s on the move, but Sam’s still on the island. “Kinda getting used to it here,” he tells Jane. And that has us wondering: Could LL COOL J stay beyond Hawai’i Season 3?
After all, there isn’t an episode count yet on him for this season, plus as Lachey told us ahead of the premiere, “If you had Sam Hanna in Hawai’i, would you let that go? Or would you utilize the beast of Sam Hanna? … Jane Tennant might as well utilize what’s in front of her.”
We’re also curious to see who else Sam might recruit to help out with Elite business. Al-Bustami is hoping her character’s on the list because, like us, she wants some Lucy and Sam scenes. (She wasn’t among those trying to figure out why Sam’s really on the island, unlike Jane, Ernie, and Noah Mills‘ Jesse.)
“It already sounds so badass,” the star says of Elite. “It just sounds so cool. And I know that certain members of our team are the ones that have more of an issue with Sam than Lucy does. But yeah, Lucy is just kind of accepting like, he’s cool, whatever. I don’t have that much of a problem with him. But I do feel like once Lucy finds out about NCIS Elite, yes, that will be a thing that she will want to get involved in just because Lucy likes to be challenged, and she’s always trying to find the next cool thing to do. And so I feel like once she finds out about that, then for sure she’ll want to be involved in it.”
Lucy might as well have auditioned with her fight while protecting the daughter of a Russian oligarch in the jungle in this episode. Al-Bustami loved filming that. “So awesome, first of all, because it’s in the jungle,” she raves. “One of my favorite types of weather to film in is when it’s rainy and misty and I guess jungle-y would be the correct way to describe this fight scene because we were in the midst of the jungle. There was a storm that was coming in and out throughout the day, and so the ground was all muddy. Everything around us was just all icky. I’ve never gotten to fight in anything like that, and so it made it more real and more fun really. But that was a blast.”
She says it’s one of her favorite fight scenes and makes sure to shout out stunt coordinates Jonathan Arthur and Brad Royster (nickname Rooster). “If it wasn’t for them… they make everything look so cool,” she adds.
Looking ahead, “I feel like some NCIS elite stuff is going to happen and all of that storyline continues to unravel,” Al-Bustami teases. “We see more of her and Kate [Tori Anderson]. I personally would love to see just a little more relationship stuff with her and hopefully learn more about her family, but just more badass, kickass Lucy.”
What did you think of the reveal of Sam’s secret? Let us know in the comments section, below.
NCIS: Hawai’i, Mondays, 10/9c, CBS
