‘FBI: International’: Jesse Lee Soffer on Wes’ Loss, New Threat, and More

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the FBI: International Season 4 premiere “A Leader, Not a Tourist.”]

Welcome to Budapest, Wes Mitchell (Jesse Lee Soffer)! The Fly Team gets a new boss in the FBI: International premiere.

Wes heads to Budapest after his partner is shot (and later dies) during a case involving home invasions in Los Angeles. It all leads back to Greg (Beau Knapp), who runs a youth center and has been using it to recruit young men and force them to work for him. In the end, Greg is arrested, but he warns Wes that he’ll find him. And Cameron Vo (Vinessa Vidotto) suggests Wes—who trained her—take over as team leader.

Below, Soffer breaks down the Season 4 premiere.

Greg warns Wes he’ll come find him when he gets out. Is Wes at all worried? How are we going to see that playing out?

Jesse Lee Soffer: Wes is definitely not worried about it and it does come back around and I think that blindsides Wes for sure. There’s a really fun arc to play out through the midseason finale there with that character.

This is so personal for him because he lost his partner because of this man—

Totally. Yeah, absolutely.

Nelly Kiss / CBS

So how much are we going to see grief from Wes going forward?

The grief happens off-camera. I think when Wes is with the team, Wes is taken to this new position, this new leadership position, and he’s got his game face on, but the whole reason that he’s taken this job is because he needed to take a different path and get to that fork in the road and go, “Okay, this is where I’m going now and I’ve got to put that stuff behind me.”

Cameron has a great pitch for him to take over as boss at the end of the premiere. What leads to him accepting it? How much does his conversation with Mike—he’s looking at the medallion at the end—factor into it?

It definitely does. It factors in a ton and her pitch factors in a ton. He trusts her, he respects her, and he appreciates that she’s gotten to a point in her career where she’s kind of thankful for how he trained her. And Mike being gone and kind of Mike’s final words to him, I think he takes that and says, “Okay, I’ve got to make some choices here and I’m going to bury myself in work and I’m going to move through this stuff and move forward.”

We saw the end of his relationship in the premiere. Is romance on his mind at all going forward?

Not yet. He’s definitely just focused on work for the time being.

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Not yet makes it sound like we could be seeing something?

All I’m saying is I haven’t seen anything yet and from what I can tell, he’s buried in work.

We see him clashing with local police in the premiere. Is there a point that he might be taking this too far and we’re going to see that?

Always. I think always. Yeah, definitely. He’s always going to take things a little too far, but not so far that we can’t get out of there.

FBI: International, Tuesdays, 9/8c, CBS