What Is the Man in the Red Suit Trying to Tell Pride on ‘NCIS: New Orleans’?

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Spoiler Alert
CBS

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Season 6, Episode 10 of NCIS: New Orleans, “Requital.”]

Pride’s (Scott Bakula) is clearly trying to tell him something, via a well-dressed man in a red suit.

NCIS: New Orleans brought back the common thread of Pride’s Season 6 nightmares in the fall finale, after the agent went through quite the taxing experience at Eddie Barrett’s (Eddie Cahill) compound. Bleeding from a head wound, Pride could only bear witness to the man’s chaos, as he released the children only to have his people then open fire on the federal agents who brought them to safety. And when his team and the FBI eventually breached the compound, Eddie fled, with Pride in pursuit.

Though Dwayne repeatedly said he was going to bring Eddie in to face consequences (life in prison), the man wondered if he truly wanted a different outcome. His friend was never coming back, and the emptiness and sense of injustice as a result would last forever. Furthermore, he knew both Rita (Chelsea Field) and Laurel’s (Shanley Caswell) addresses. “You think I can’t get to them? No matter where you put me? You think I don’t still have people willing to do anything I ask?” Eddie taunted Pride. “Christopher Lasalle and his brother were just a small taste of what I’m capable of.” He promised to drag Pride into his chaos.

And then next thing we knew, we heard gunshots and saw Gregorio (Vanessa Ferlito) and Sebastian (Rob Kerkovich) reaching Pride — and Eddie’s dead body. He was shot three times in the chest. He reached for his gun, he told his agents. But did he?

Later that night, Pride was asleep on his bed when he woke up to the sound of the floor creaking and someone in his apartment. Gun in hand, he checked the door, only to turn and see the man in the red suit standing in his living room, the clearest we’ve ever seen him. Then he really woke up and went into the living room, looking around.

Pride dreamed of the man in the red suit — facing away from him — standing in the road in the Season 6 premiere. This figure popped up again in the following episode, as Pride dreamed he was chasing him through the foggy streets of New Orleans. When he eventually came face-to-face with him — still in the fog — he ordered him to put his hands where he could see him. After he shot him, he found the body of a little girl instead.

“A man in a red suit keeps showing up, never where he’s supposed to be,” he told Loretta (CCH Pounder). “I try to get to him, but I can’t. And then last night, he led me to someone I hadn’t thought about in years.” That girl died in a hostage situation when he was a young sheriff. She suggested these nightmares were a side effect of the drugs he was injected with when he was abducted at the end of Season 5. They could alter his neural networks and loosen up memories that had been lost. But what about the guy in the red suit?

Dr. Tanaka (Angel Desai) had a theory in Episode 3, “Bad Apple.” “It’s always the same people,” Pride told her of his intense nightmares. “A victim from a past case, a guy in a red suit.” Though it may not necessarily mean anything, she allowed, “it is not the dream telling you something, it’s you telling yourself.”

Is the man in the red suit’s reappearance tied to whatever we didn’t see happen between Pride and Eddie? Or might he be a sign that something from Pride’s past is going to make another (possibly haunting) return. Though Pride didn’t seem to recognize the man in the red suit, there did seem to be something about him that stopped him in his latest dream. We’ll have to wait to see what’s really going on when the season resumes on its new night in 2020.

NCIS: New Orleans, Sunday, February 16, 10/9c, CBS