NCIS: Sydney is the first show in this procedural franchise to be set outside the United States. While it’s cool that there’s now been this international expansion for one of CBS Studios’ most valuable properties, it also makes it hard for Sydney to cross over with NCIS since that obviously films stateside. However, ahead of Sydney Season 3’s premiere on the 2025 TV schedule, Olivia Swann, who plays NCIS Supervisory Special Agent Michelle Mackey, shared her idea with CinemaBlend about how a crossover with the flagship show could be pulled off.
During my recent interview with Swann about what’s coming up in NCIS: Sydney Season 3 (which will also be streamable with a Paramount+ subscription) and more, I was curious about, despite the aforementioned filming complications, which NCIS character she’d want to see Mackey appear alongside. She answered:
Oh, I think, I think Jessica Knight, I think they’d get on very well, two fiery badass women working together, would be pretty fun. I don’t know how we do it, but I would love to do it, ‘cause it’s a question that comes up a lot. I just think it would be cool if even… we all have like an episode in our own seasons that somehow we were working together but like not together, do you know what I mean?
A Michelle Mackey/Jessica Knight team-up does sound like it would be fun, but I like how Olivia Swann’s thinking outside of the box for pulling off an NCIS/NCIS: Sydney crossover. If it’s too complicated (for now) to have actors from either show to travel across the Pacific Ocean to appear on the other, why not have them work together from afar? Have the writers from both series pen a crossover that revolves around a case that these teams need to investigate on separate fronts in order to put together the full picture.
A hypothetical crossover like this reminds me of what NCIS and NCIS: Origins are doing this fall. The Origins team in the early 1990s will look into a case that will be revisited more than three decades later by the NCIS team. It’s a unique way to tie these shows together since the traditional crossover model wouldn’t have worked. At least for an NCIS/NCIS: Sydney crossover, though, there’s the option for the characters from these respective shows to communicate with each other on video calls.
So far the closest NCIS and NCIS: Sydney have overlapped is Kasie Hines in the former series mentioned selling 20 bags of coffee to a “Michelle” at the Sydney office in the episode “Bad Blood,” a reference to Michelle Mackey. I’ll cross my fingers that something more direct can be crafted in the future, and would definitely welcome seeing Olivia Swann’s idea being implemented. Until then, NCIS Season 23 and NCIS: Sydney Season 3 will air Tuesdays on CBS at 8 p.m. ET and 10 p.m. ET, respectively, with NCIS: Origins Season 2 sandwiched in-between.