‘FBI’ Boss Previews OA’s Return to the Team: Is He Forever Changed?

When FBI Season 9 premieres on Monday, October 5, the team looks a bit different. OA (Zeeko Zaki) is now undercover after he, Maggie (Missy Peregrym), and Isobel (Alana De La Garza) set him up to be prime for Anna (Claire Coffee) to snatch him up for her shady strike team. But taking her down won’t be so easy, and even once he does, this assignment is going to stay with him.

“We will not be the first TV show or movie to tell this story,” showrunner Mike Weiss acknowledges, “but one of the most interesting things about being undercover is that a character that you usually love has to figure out how to not lose himself or herself in their undercover assignment: How do you maintain cover and go deep into a world where you’re surrounded by bad people and not have it cost you your soul in the process?”

That’s going to be OA’s arc for the season, he tells TV Insider. After all, it’s no surprise to anyone that he will return to 26 Fed and his team at some point.

Bennett Raglin/CBS

“But when he eventually does come back to the team, he’s going to be changed by his experiences undercover, and it’s going to be up to Maggie, Scola [John Boyd], Eva [Juliana Aiden Martinez], and everyone to help him get back to the person and the agent that he was before he went undercover,” Weiss says. “The question is, is that even fully, fully possible? Are you forever changed by your experience if it’s that intense going on an assignment like this? And that’s kind of the longer arc part of the story that we’re going to be telling for OA. And Zeeko is all over it. He’s so dialed into this question and this problem. And I think fans are going to love these episodes, especially at the top of the season, that focus on him and this struggle so much.”

OA will have to contend not just with the fallout from this assignment going forward, but also with the fact that ADIC Green (Curtiss Cook), who fired him, was essentially played by him, Maggie, and Isobel. And speaking of Green, Maggie’s new partner, Isaiah (Roland Buck III), is his nephew. But don’t call him a “nepo baby,” says the EP.

Related

'FBI': Zeeko Zaki Previews Challenges for OA Undercover & How Maggie's Doing Without Him

“Isaiah is a totally loyal, above-board FBI agent. He’s not a nepo baby. Unfortunately for him, his uncle is the ADIC of the New York field office, and you’re very aware of that. Other agents are aware of the fact that your uncle has juice in the FBI. And he, I think, is trying to dodge that and just make it clear that he’s his own agent,” Weiss tells us.

“But he’s also not stupid. And he starts to figure out that something is going on, that Maggie’s not being 100% truthful about what happened to her old partner,” he continues. “And if they’re going to be real partners at a certain point, the question is, can she trust him? Can she let him in on this secret that she, Isobel, and OA have been keeping, especially difficult when his uncle is the highest-ranking person that they had to fool to pull this off?”

FBI, Season 9 Premiere, Monday, October 5, 8/7c, CBS