Followers of the NCIS franchise can now stay up for this nook of CBS’ procedural panorama being current two nights every week on the 2025 TV schedule. Along with the flagship collection and the prequel NCIS: Origins each persevering with to air on Monday nights, this Friday, NCIS: Sydney Season 2 will debut, arriving somewhat over a 12 months after Season 1 ended. Forward of the Australia-set spinoff’s return, CinemaBlend discovered from showrunner Morgan O’Neill about how Sydney Season 2 “swung for the fences,” and that can embody an necessary reveal regarding Olivia Swann’s Michelle Mackey.
I just lately had the pleasure of talking with O’Neill about what’s arising within the first chunk of NCIS: Sydney Season 2, which is able to proceed to be streamable with a Paramount+ subscription. I started the interview by asking him what the massive aim was he and his group had been trying to accomplish with the second season, notably if there any methods the present can be elevated or stand out from what was proven Season 1. He answered:
Yeah, look, we sat down on the very starting of planning of Season 2, and we mentioned, ‘Look, Season 1 was fairly good, however what are some ways in which in each aspect of the present that we ship, we might be larger, bolder, extra dangerous? The place we will blow up the manufacturing worth even additional, the place we will take these characters on a journey that’s much more thrilling, the place we will increase the stakes, the place we will make the stakes extra private? Each little aspect of of the present that we might have a look at, we needed to guarantee that we had been supercharging… We’ve actually swung for the fences on a few these episodes.
Morgan O’Neill then talked about how the “stakes are gargantuan” in Season 2’s second episode. Clearly he didn’t go as far as to disclose particular story particulars, however that episode will discover how Australia is “the world’s largest island sitting in the course of the world’s most contested patch of ocean,” and as such is “the geopolitical hotspot when it comes to varied ideologies banging up in opposition to each other. Nonetheless, those that are followers of Mackey positively gained’t wish to miss the Season 2 premiere, as one thing huge is revealed in regards to the NCIS Particular Agent-in-Cost for the present. As O’Neill put it:
… With out spoiling something from the very first episode of the second season, we begin to be taught issues about our characters which can be type of revelatory. What we find out about Mackie in that first episode then colours all the pieces that we have seen earlier than and all the pieces that we see afterwards as a result of there is a aspect of her character that we merely weren’t given entry to. And now that we will see via that lens, she’s a unique particular person, and plenty of the choices she’s making may be seen in a unique gentle.
After all, Olivia Swann will as soon as once more be joined in NCIS: Sydney’s essential solid by Todd Lasance, Sean Sagar, Tuuli Narkle, Mavournee Hazel and William McInnes. In addition they gained’t be missing in alternatives to shine in Sydney Season 2, and Morgan O’Neill welcomed the chance to discover their characterizations extra deeply, explaining:
And for me, it actually deepens our understanding of those characters and what makes them tick, and on the identical time, it makes them much more weak. As a result of once you be taught stuff that is necessary to somebody, that is each takes you nearer to them, however it additionally opens them as much as all kinds of hazard as a result of they’re the issues that we hold hidden from the world, proper? For good cause. And so every of our characters throughout the second season, to a larger or lesser extent, permits the viewers in somewhat bit extra, and really feel prefer it actually elevates the second season to an emotional place that we hadn’t actually touched on within the 1st.
NCIS: Sydney scored its Season 2 renewal in March 2024, roughly a month and a half after Season 1 concluded. Once we left off with these characters, it was revealed that Colonel Rankin was tied to the person who kidnapped JD’s son Jack. Season 2 will discover the aftermath of this twist whereas dropping that huge Mackey reveal, so how’s that for a grand return?
As for awaits the remainder of the season, you’ll simply have to both NCIS: Sydney Fridays at 8 pm on CBS, or stream it on Paramount+ afterwards, to seek out out.