Did ‘NCIS: Hawai’i’ Just Kill Off 3 Agents Ahead of Series Finale? (RECAP)

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for NCIS: Hawai’i Season 3 Episode 9 “Spill the Tea.”]

Compound X is no joke, as an entire team learns by the end of the first part of the NCIS: Hawai’i series finale.

Sam’s (LL COOL J) read Jane (Vanessa Lachey) in about the Elite team when he had her interrogate the Chemist. Ernie (Jason Antoon) found out about it when Sam had him look at an encrypted laptop and he found that when Elite accessed it, their system had been compromised. And now, Lucy (Yasmine Al-Bustami) may or may not have dislocated one of the Elite agents’ shoulders when he tells her to get in a van; inside already are Jesse (Noah Mills) and Kai (Alex Tarrant). They’re taken, blindfolded, to Elite’s secret holding facility, where they’re told the Chemist was found murdered that morning.

Swift (Henry Ian Cusick) has been the one interrogating him, but fortunately, he’s fine, though they do confirm it was the tea they’d been drinking that killed the Chemist; he was severely immunocompromised due to the chemicals he’d handled over the years, so a health food supplement added to his tea over time was poison to him. (Whoever killed him knew he had a weak immune system and therefore knew him well.) One person connected to the secure facility is MIA; when Kai and Lucy head to his place, they find his “college friend” “Barry” there … and he throws a knife at them and jumps out the window. He’s with the Bratva, but why would the Russian mob try to break him out of prison only to then kill him? Did they not want anyone else to use him? Whatever the case, it’s bad news because he’s the only one who can help them stop this mysterious Compound X, which is nearly incurable.

After IDing Barry and tracing his movements on the island, the agents discover he and four others from the Russian mob arrived 10 days ago. Both Jane and Sam’s teams hit where they’re staying and take out the five men—and find a hostage. Dr. Annalisa Cruz, who has a PhD in organic chemistry, was the Chemist’s assistant, and though she claims she didn’t know what he was doing at first, the very stressed and sleep-deprived Swift keeps pushing her, to the point that Jane has to intervene and pull him out of the room. But Cruz was the one to tell the Russians about the Chemist’s immune system.

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Ernie gets into the laptop the Russians had and finds the full catalog of Elite’s interrogations of the Chemist—they knew he was talking—as well as research notes about Compound X. Cruz confirms that X tricks the immune system into attacking itself; it’s odorless, tasteless, airborne, and a small amount released in enclosed space can kill thousands in minutes. Rewatching Swift’s interrogations of the Chemist as well as tracing his movements do get the team a location: Belgrade.

Sam and the Elite team, as well as Jane, Jesse, Chase (Seana Kofoed), and Cruz head to Belgrade; Cruz can help contain the compound. There are multiple possible locations for the fourth lab where the compound is, however, but it turns out to be a not totally bad thing that Jane’s contact confirms to Federov, the Godfather of the Bratva, that she and the others are there. Jane walks into the restaurant where the Godfather is and, through their conversation, learns he wasn’t responsible for the Chemist’s murder (it’s not good business to kill a profit maker); did have the Chemist make X but wanted nothing to do with it after (he’s a businessman, and you can’t do business with the dead); and the location of the fourth lab (in exchange for Jane owing him a personal favor).

Sam leads the Elite team and Cruz into the lab, and Cruz secures the canisters in a case (Chase is on the plane waiting to secure them for travel)…. but that’s when things take a turn. The Bratva’s Godfather reveals that Cruz was already in Hawai’i and had been for weeks, whereas they thought she’d been kidnapped and brought there. And then Cruz, after Sam leaves her and the others to check the exit out, drops a canister and puts on her gas mask. The rest of the Elite team isn’t so lucky, and Sam, having been warned by Jane and locked outside the room, can only watch as the three die…

What did you think of the first part of the NCIS: Hawai’i series finale? Did you suspect Cruz? Let us know in the comments section, below.

NCIS: Hawai’i, Mondays, 10/9c, CBS