Warning: SPOILERS for the NCIS episode “Nexus” are forward!
Final week, Wilmer Valderrama shared that the NCIS Season 22 finale would ship a significant loss of life, although it fortunately didn’t find yourself being any of the characters I speculated about forward of time. As an alternative, “Nexus,” which simply completed airing on the 2025 TV schedule, ended with Gary Cole’s Alden Parker discovering his father Roman, performed by Francis X. McCarthy, having been poisoned by Rebecca De Mornay’s Carla Marino, the pinnacle of the Kansas Metropolis mob. It was one hell of a game-changing scene to wrap up this season, and Cole informed CinemaBlend why he discovered it “intimidating” to shoot what’s unquestionably Parker’s most emotionally devastated second on NCIS but.
There have been lots of twist and turns to account for on this episode following the massive shakeup to the LaRoche storyline delivered final week, however arguably essentially the most notable of them was that Carla Marino was truly the brand new head of Nexus, the drug cartel that’s been inflicting hassle because the begin Season 22. However even when remembering that she and Parker have additionally been adversaries for years, the truth that Carla stooped to murdering Roman was stunning. In actual life, Gary Cole was happy with how this twist turned out, inform me throughout my interview with him earlier as we speak:
I imply, we all know once we do the final present, they’re gonna push issues. However I assumed it was a extremely dynamic ending, and the best way they arrived at it I assumed was, as I all the time take into consideration our writers, properly thought out. You did not actually essentially see it coming, which I believe is sweet. I used to be glad to have one thing to play that was that intense. It intimidated me as a result of lots of issues needed to occur shortly within the within the final scene, however I believe the best way that they constructed it was good.
Carla Marino was launched within the episode “Knight and Day,” the place it was established that Alden Parker had tried for years to apprehend her when he was working on the FBI. So there was already no scarcity of consideration when she returned in “Nexus” to supply her providers to NCIS to assist with stopping Nexus. However as talked about, it was truly Carla working the cartel as of late, with the originally-presumed chief referred to as The Butcher being fictional. And whereas Nexus did certainly need to steal uranium to make a unclean bomb so Carla may eradicate the heads of the opposite 4 crime households, she was additionally insistent on exacting revenge for the position she believes Parker performed in her son’s loss of life.
Carla had found Alden Parker was the one who informed her son Jason about her felony actions, which is what prompted Jason to flee from her and put him on the trail to dying in a bike accident. After kidnapping Parker throughout “Nexus,” it initially appeared like she was going kill him, however not so. As an alternative, Parker got here again to his residence and located his father’s lifeless physique sitting in a chair in entrance of the taking part in TV with blood on his shirt. After I requested Gary Cole how into the correct of psychological headspace for this scene, he began off by saying:
Nicely, the one factor I acknowledged was that simply as you described it, there was an enormous transition, possibly even two transitions, and that was a bit intimidating. I used to be like, ‘Boy, is that gonna work?’ However the best way it was laid out and the best way we shot it and the best way José [Clemente Hernandez] directed it, I believe it was pulled off. One is clearly simply the invention of the physique. In order that’s a shock.
So how do we all know with 100% certainty that Carla Marino killed Roman Parker? Nicely, earlier within the episode, Carla stopped by Parker’s place as he and his father had been having dinner, and he or she invited herself in. Roman, unaware of Carla’s felony actions, was charmed by her, so evidently he let her into her son’s residence whereas Parker was gone, and so they loved some wine collectively. Sadly, Carla laced Roman’s wine with poison, and the lipstick stain left on the opposite glass was sufficient to clue Parker in on what occur, sending him right into a rage and throwing his TV to the bottom. Gary Cole continued:
Then there’s the quick recognition that it was a homicide, which kicks it up even one other stage. As a result of discovering a useless physique is one factor of a beloved one. Discovering a beloved one that’s murdered is a complete different animal. As a result of unexpectedly, you are not simply in shock and grief. You’ve got obtained disgrace and guilt and rage and every little thing blowing via your head. It is laborious to course of. After which the need was for it to show into simply vengeful rage. Or at the least the premeditation of one thing to come back. They inbuilt one thing bodily with destroying the tv and all that stuff.
Parker already had greater than sufficient incentive to place Carla Marino behind bars, however now she’s taken away his father away earlier than it was his time. It’s laborious to say how quickly this shall be adopted up on in NCIS Season 23, however I’m already curious to see if Parker will step exterior the legislation to dispense what he sees as justice to his adversary. “Nexus” additionally ended with one more tease with the present’s ongoing Lily thriller, with Jimmy Palmer telling Jessica Knight that “one thing doesn’t add up” with Parker’s mom’s authentic loss of life certificates. One thing tells me, although, that Parker’s not in the proper mind set to go down that highway proper now.
NCIS Season 23 premieres this fall alongside NCIS: Origins Season 2, and we’ll let you recognize when the precise day and time is introduced. NCIS: Tony & Ziva can even premiere on Paramount+ across the identical time, whereas NCIS: Sydney Season 3’s arrival isn’t narrowed down simply but.