‘FBI’ Boss Reveals How Maggie & OA’s Partnership Is Challenged by Him Undercover

FBI separating partners Maggie (Missy Peregrym) and OA (Zeeko Zaki) like it is at the beginning of Season 9 — for multiple episodes — came out of conversations between the writers and one of the stars, showrunner Mike Weiss told TV Insider. Warning: Spoilers for the FBI Season 9 premiere ahead!

OA’s undercover assignment to take down Anna (Claire Coffee) and her strike team while Maggie has a new partner will last beyond the premiere, as the episode’s final moments reveal. What he’s seen thus far — including a citizen they kidnapped dying by suicide rather than risk giving up the name of his girlfriend, guilty of treason, during torture — isn’t enough. And so now OA has to go deeper.

Below, showrunner Mike Weiss explains what that means for him going forward and more. (Plus, read what Zeeko Zaki had to say about the premiere here.)

OA thought he was done. He went into that meeting with Isobel at the end thinking he had enough, this would be it. So how does it affect him that’s not the case and that now he not only has to go back in, but he kind of has to go deeper because he has to make Anna trust him?

Mike Weiss: I think you’re just continuing to get farther and farther away from home on your adventure. You’re desperate. The Odyssey was very popular this summer, the most famous story ever told about a soldier who just wants to get home. And that’s all OA wants to do, but he knows that he can’t on some level. And so he’s dreading… He can feel that the more time he’s spending with these people, the harder it is for him to maintain the things that make him such an, I think, iconic hero — his loyalty, his patriotism, his honesty, all of those traits are being challenged. And he has to do a better job of getting Anna to trust him, which means telling more lies. And the more lies you tell, at a certain point, how many lies can you tell before you just become a liar? That’s what he’s afraid of.

Bennett Raglin/CBS

But besides the telling more lies, what else are we going to see him have to do to gain Anna’s trust the way that he has to? Because she’s so good at what she does that he has to be so careful that she doesn’t pick up on anything.

Well, I don’t want to spoil the tactics that we use in Episode 3, but he’s going to figure out how to get what 26 Fed needs. And then the real fear is — because you’re right, Anna is good at what she does — is she going to figure out that she’s been played by this guy for months?

And then who knows what Devin will do because Devin is the one who’s really like…

Oh, yeah. You don’t want to wind up on Devin’s bad side.

What is OA and Anna’s dynamic like really in the next couple of episodes?

It’s like a military relationship or an intense coach — the idea of, you kind of break someone down to build them back up. I think that she’s pushing him to go further and embrace the shadowy, maybe the dark things that the strike team does. She knows he’s smart, she knows he’s good, she knows he’s capable in the field, but she wants to see him embrace that darkness, and he’s trying to both maintain cover while also trying to figure out how to bring some of his light into that darkness. So, it’s tense. All of the scenes they’re in together, you’re reading them as he’s playing her and you’re just really hoping that she doesn’t figure that out. There’s tension to all of their scenes together.

I absolutely loved Maggie and OA’s reunion, both in the field and then also at the water tower. What did you want to do with those? Because it was something that they needed, it was something the audience needed, too.

Yeah, I think the audience totally needs to… This whole storyline came out of discussions that I had, that the writers had with Missy in between seasons, and she really was feeling so great about her friendship with Zeeko, and then as Maggie, Maggie’s partnership with OA, and wanting to challenge us to highlight what an incredible team they are. And so the whole story was about, if these people are so tight, how do we break them apart — physically, not emotionally, but physically, how do we separate them so that we can show just how badly they need each other and make the audience stomp their feet and demand that we bring them back together? Because that’s what the audience, I think, really craves, even if they don’t know how to ask for it.

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

So, the reunions and those moments of togetherness in Episode 1 are important, but then when he does return and when he returns a changed man, I think the relationship is going to be challenged in a different way. This time they’re not physically apart, but there is some emotional distance. And the question is, are they going to be able to close that emotional distance and form an even tighter, more meaningful, deeper bond by the end of this season, which is our goal.

It looked like Jubal (Jeremy Sisto) was picking up on some things from Isobel (Alana De La Garza) during the episode, clocking some things about where she got the intel. How much is he figuring out on his own? Because it feels like if anyone’s going to put the pieces together and be like, “Hmm, there’s someone she trusts, not saying, OA is gone, haven’t heard from him,” it feels like Jubal would.

No spoilers, but he’s going to figure it out soon because he is so smart. We wanted to tell a story that would challenge our whole team in new ways. We’re so often, always kind of on the same page with each other, but we’ve got this operational secret, which is that OA was fired purposefully to go undercover with Anna. And that secret is held really closely. It’s just Isobel, Maggie, and OA who know it, and they’re keeping the circle small because the more people that know, the more chances there are that someone leaks or makes some kind of a tactical mistake. But if you’re Jubal, how does that affect you? You’ve got this longstanding relationship with Isobel, you’re on the same page with her, aren’t you? And so we wanted to be able to play some of those dynamics as well as we came into Season 9.

FBI, Mondays, 8/7c, CBS