Did Jubal Get Closure on ‘International’ Trip? ‘FBI’ Star Jeremy Sisto Explains Why He Couldn’t
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for FBI: International Season 3 Episode 8 “Remove the Compromise.”]
After going after the cartel responsible for his girlfriend Rina’s death on FBI, does Jubal (Jeremy Sisto) have any sense of closure with the latest International episode? Not necessarily.
Upon hearing there’s an ongoing investigation into the Vargas family—Antonio (David Zayas) is behind bars—Jubal hops a flight to Budapest. Once there, he’s tested with the CIA planning to just take out the nephew about to take over (and anyone else at a weapons sale) with a missile. When it becomes clear that the CIA doesn’t care about collateral damage, however, Scott (Luke Kleintank) insists on putting himself in the line of fire and Jubal eventually joins him, resulting in a shootout—yes, Jubal in the field, in the middle of the action, something we don’t usually see!
In the end, the nephew survives (and will be locked up in Manhattan), the drugs and weapons are secured, and a corrupt agent dies. They put a dent in the cartel’s operations. Jubal admits to Scott that he wanted revenge, not justice, and had been hoping the CIA would do the dirty work for him. He was tempted to let the nephew die until he thought of what Rina stood for. Jubal also still hasn’t been able to wrap his head around Rina’s death. But does he have any sense of closure now?
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“I don’t know, closure is an interesting thing. I don’t think closure actually is going to come from any kind of vengeance,” Sisto tells TV Insider. “I think to some degree he’s already achieved closure. As awful as it was and as much as he really loved Rina. She represented a very specific time in his life. They saw each other through the end of their marriages. They got together when he was still in the throes of his alcoholism and then only reconnected fairly recently and started to get into this relationship. And it was getting serious and real, but it wasn’t like they were married for 10 years. It wasn’t like their lives were so ingrained.”
Rather, her death “cut short something, a life together that was still to be written, and it’s so extremely tragic,” explains Sisto. He calls that loss “a pain that will always be there. I don’t think there’s much closure to get. Closure seems to be something that has to come when your life has changed in such a way that you’re really having to evolve into a new person in order to move on.”
For the most part on FBI, Jubal stays in the JOC, but he’s right in the thick of it in this International episode. Getting in on the action was fun for Sisto. “I was able to bring my son, who’s 12, over and we had night shoots every night and we were out in an abandoned Russian military base and there were 30 stunt guys all getting shot and I’m running around with a gun,” he recalls. “That stuff is really fun to watch and it takes a long time to shoot and I like it. It’s cool. It feels like I’m a ride at Universal or something.”
Jubal has been in the field before—and was for years—and so “I think it comes naturally to him to some degree,” says Sisto. “And to some degree, I think he misses it. There’s definitely excitement there, but at the same time, it’s more complicated.” Because he’s an addict, being in the position that being in the field puts a person in—”Your life is on the line, you’re going through moments that could it all”—it can “bring up certain personal vulnerabilities,” he notes. “And so it definitely takes a toll.”
“If I, Jeremy, were actually in the situation, I would be a wreck for a long time, but Jubal’s got a strong constitution,” he continues. “So his main emotional challenge that comes from this is seeing him act in a way that doesn’t go with his values, his integrity. He has a really strong sense of integrity, and it does not fit well with him when he operates outside of that.”
In that last conversation with Scott, Jubal mentions that Rina used to say to sing in the show, to start the day off on a good note, and he still does it every morning. So what’s Jubal’s go-to song? “It’s gotta be ‘Careless Whisper,'” Sisto says with a laugh. “I like ‘Careless Whisper.’ Let’s go with that. It’s gotta be something ‘80s.”
FBI: International, Tuesdays, 9/8c, CBS
FBI: International where to stream
