9 Burning Questions for ‘NCIS,’ ‘LA’ & ‘Hawai’i’ Next Season
While NCIS may have been the only one to end its most recent season with what we consider a typical cliffhanger, both spinoffs, Los Angeles and Hawai’i, did leave quite a few things up in the air.
The original NCIS has Alden Parker (Gary Cole) unknowingly in the car with someone — his ex-wife, Vivian (Teri Polo)! It also introduced a new romance at the end of Season 19, and given how relationships have gone in the past on this show, you can’t blame us for being a bit concerned. Over on NCIS: LA, the team celebrated Kensi (Daniela Ruah) and Deeks (Eric Christian Olsen) officially becoming foster parents to Rosa (Natalia Del Riego), and Callen (Chris O’Donnell) finally proposing to Anna (Bar Paly). But Season 13 closed out without answers for at least a couple ongoing arcs. The newest series in the franchise, NCIS: Hawai’i, also ended with a party and Lucy (Yasmine Al-Bustami) and Kate (Tori Anderson) reuniting, but their relationship has been rocky, to say the least.
Scroll down as we take a look at some of the burning questions we have for all three NCIS shows for the 2022-2023 season.
NCIS, Season 20 Premiere, Monday, September 19, 9/8c, CBS
NCIS: Hawai’i, Season 2 Premiere, Monday, September 19, 9/8c, CBS
NCIS: Los Angeles, Season 14 Premiere, Sunday, October 9, 10/9c, CBS
NCIS: Is Vivian the Raven?
In the Season 19 finale, the team worked to find Vivian, who had, it appeared, been kidnapped by the Raven… only to escape and show up at her ex-husband’s. Then, with Parker framed for the murder of his ex-partner, he went on the run, and she tagged along, but for nefarious reasons, it seemed. “It’s done. I have him,” she texted someone in the car, a message very similar to one that her ex-partner sent while seeing her get “kidnapped” earlier. That suggests at the very least that she’s working for the Raven (who could be the one sending the “how’s it going?” texts to get those responses). But is it possible that the same person framing Parker and after the team is the very one at his side?
NCIS: How will the Raven case end?
Heading into Season 20, the team is without leader — McGee (Sean Murray) will be filling in — and they’re at a disadvantage because they don’t know they shouldn’t trust Vivian. Could that mean they lose one of their own before catching the Raven? After all, this Big Bad is already responsible for landing two of their own (Brian Dietzen’s Dr. Jimmy Palmer and Diona Reasonover’s Kasie Hines) in the hospital.
But in order to think about how this arc will end, we have to consider what we know about what’s next. “One of the things we want to do with this character is make them more multidimensional than we have with some other of our bad guys that have crossed episode lines. A lot of times they’ve just been the generic Big Bad. This guy we want to, at some point, know him a little better and be surprised by him and also maybe relate to him in some way,” executive producer Steven D. Binder told TV Insider. “I think the Raven’s gonna be surprising. I think she’s gonna really throw you for a loop when you find out what what’s going on with them.”
That could affect how this ends for the Raven, whoever that person is. Does the Raven care about the risk to their own life? If Vivian is the Raven, is it possible she could not want her ex-husband dead, no matter what her endgame is with him? If she isn’t, could she switch sides to protect him, affecting some of the Raven’s final moves?
NCIS: Will Palmer & Knight's relationship last?
On the one hand, with Palmer and Jessica Knight (Katrina Law), we’re seeing a relationship play out on screen in a way we have yet to on NCIS. But it can be tricky to date people you work with, even if they’re not partners in the field, and there is the matter of Palmer maybe not being ready for a relationship after losing his wife in the way that he may need to be, given that he and Knight were close friends before taking this latest step.
“By getting together sooner, they can break up sooner and then we can be in that space or they can be together. We just didn’t want to slow walk the part that we’ve slow walked before because that enables us to get to places that we haven’t done before,” Binder noted. “We want to actually follow this journey a little more.” Let’s just hope that doesn’t mean it doesn’t end on a happy note.
NCIS: Los Angeles: What's going on with Hetty?
We know that Hetty (Linda Hunt) is in Syria to track down two of her people, but there’s so much we don’t know about what’s going on, including if she’s OK following the drone strike that some agree she probably ordered herself.
“Part of next season will be our guys finding out where she is, what happened and probably having to go in and pull her out of the fire,” executive producer R. Scott Gemmill teased. But how long will that take? Will they have to go rogue (which is nothing new) to help her? And how will what happens when they are reunited with Hetty and this arc is wrapped affect what’s next for the team?
NCIS: Los Angeles: When will Kessler rear his very dangerous head again?
Kessler (Frank Military), introduced in Season 12, may be free, but he’s made it clear that he has his sights set on Kensi (with quite the memorable threat). And now that Kensi and Deeks’ family has grown, we’re even more worried about what he will do before that arc ends.
“That’ll be something that we will resolve next season,” Gemmill confirmed. “I think for sure, we’ll put that one to bed because nobody wants to live with that over their shoulders the rest of their lives.”
NCIS: Los Angeles: Will Callen and Anna get married?
The season ended with Callen and Anna engaged, after he’d had the ring for quite a while. “That was another one of those things where you can slow roll these things for a certain amount of time, but at some point, I think you owe it to the characters and also to the audience to make a move,” Gemmill explained. “So we just decided, at some point we have to do something, either put an end to it or move forward.”
While they chose the latter, in case it ended up being the series finale, now that there is another season, that doesn’t mean there will be a wedding. After all, Callen’s still investigating his past (and there seems to always be something else to uncover there) and Anna wants a normal life, which he’s not sure he can give her.
NCIS: Hawai'i: Can Lucy and Kate make a relationship work this time?
“I will do it right this time,” Kate promised — she hadn’t yet broken up with her girlfriend when they were together before — after singing as a grand gesture to win Lucy back in the finale. Will they be able to make it work, especially since now, their relationship will be in the open, as opposed to when it was undefined and they weren’t talking to anyone about it?
“We’re going to live in the space of what does their relationship look like? At the beginning of the season, we’re really just focusing on that,” executive producer Jan Nash said. “What is it that they want from a relationship and how does that get embodied in our television show?”
NCIS: Hawai'i: How much will Joe be in Jane's life?
While Jane (Vanessa Lachey) and Joe (Enver Gjokaj) seemed to be figuring things out, there’s the matter of distance: She’s in Hawai’i, he’s based in D.C. What happens next for them depends on Gjokaj’s availability, Nash confirmed, and it’s possible that Jane’s future could include a new love interest. “Jane Tennant as a leader of this team who has a full life, both in terms of co-parenting her children with her ex-husband, with whatever the opportunities and challenges that her children are facing, we want her to have a full adult life as well. And so we will be looking to sort of figure out how to give her an interesting dating life going forward,” the EP explained.
NCIS: Hawai'i: Will there be a multi-episode Big Bad in Season 2?
Now that Hawai’i is heading into its second season and after seeing Jane struggle with learning the truth about her mentor, Maggie Shaw (Julie White) — and with NCIS and LA both in the middle of multi-season arcs — we can’t help but wonder what the future may hold in terms of the next one for the island-set drama. Could someone from one of the team’s past come back? Will an investigation turn personal (hopefully not tragically!) for one and lead to a multi-episode villain?
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