[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for NCIS Season 22 Episode 18 “After the Storm.”]
LL Cool J reprises his NCIS: LA position as Sam Hanna within the Monday, April 21, episode of NCIS. And together with his return — he appeared on the mothership within the LA backdoor pilot and the three-show crossover with Hawai’i — comes a few key updates.
To start with, Sam is now not with NCIS. After his Elite workforce was killed in Hawai’i, he requested a go away of absence as a result of he wished a change of tempo. Now, he’s working in D.C., on the Hill, carrying a swimsuit, coping with bureaucrats, and doing his finest to guard democracy. (One senator turns out to be useful in the course of the case.) It’s a “course correction,” he tells Knight (Katrina Regulation) when she checks on him, figuring out the grief of shedding a workforce (for her, it was her REACT workforce). He requested to be a voice since politicians don’t see the sacrifices troopers make. He additionally has a standing weekend karaoke date with Palmer (Brian Dietzen) and his daughter Victoria; Sam sings “slightly,” whereas Palmer raps, old-school. (Love the nod to LL Cool J’s music profession.)
When Knight remarks that Sam’s new place, a lone wolf job, sounds extra like one thing Callen (Chris O’Donnell) would do, he reveals that his companion’s now not a lone wolf: He and Anna (Bar Paly) predict a “new pup”! Sam additionally offers some information about Jane Tennant (NCIS: Hawai’i‘s Vanessa Lachey) when he brings in pastries for the workforce on the finish: She bakes.
Sonja Flemming / CBS
By the top of the episode, Sam has give up his new job. “Seeing your workforce, working shoulder to shoulder with them, jogged my memory how a lot I missed it,” he explains to Vance (Rocky Carroll). The director remarks, “Properly, you all the time had been a workforce participant, like all good SEAL,” and assures him, “There’s all the time a spot for you again at NCIS.” Sam simply has some issues to care for first — resulting in information about Hetty! “Wouldn’t have something to do with Hetty, wouldn’t it? I’ve heard rumors she’s been noticed on the fallacious aspect of the DMZ,” Vance feedback, however Sam tells him it’s higher he doesn’t know. The “see you round” when McGee (Sean Murray) and Sam say goodbye in passing makes us assume this gained’t be the final time we see LL Cool J on NCIS.
As for the case, it’s Sam’s badge quantity that will get him concerned: The workforce’s suspect within the murders of three vets retains repeating it. He offers his title, Mark Davis, as soon as in interrogation, and Sam can’t consider his buddy might be accountable. He trusted him together with his life. However, it seems, the person in interrogation isn’t Mark, however somewhat, his brother, Roger. Mark’s in bother, and Sam’s the one particular person he trusts, so he offers Roger his badge quantity. Whereas Roger was coated within the victims’ blood, he insists he didn’t kill them — he went to the motel to satisfy Mark however discovered them and tried to do CPR — nor did his brother. He desires Sam to search out Mark earlier than he finally ends up lifeless, too.
Although it does seem like Mark might be responsible of homicide and Sam worries he’s not the person he remembers, he’s been captured due to his try and blow the whistle on a non-public navy firm, Iron Horizon, hiring vets and having them shield warlords and different dangerous guys, which none of them signed up for. (The lady operating the employment companies charity that led them to Iron Horizon offered Mark out.) Rescuing him results in Sam, McGee, Knight, and Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) going through off towards Russian mercenaries in some brutal hand-to-hand that leaves all of them bloody. (To search out somebody who’s powerful for Sam to take down? Spectacular.)
Elsewhere, McGee continues to analyze Laroche, however Torres worries that he’s changing into obsessed. McGee hopes to have the proof he wants through a buddy on the Division of Justice who’s sending an unpublished report with Laroche’s title throughout it. Parker (Gary Cole) warns McGee that phrase of what he’s doing is making its means across the constructing.
In actual fact, Vance calls McGee into his workplace on the finish of the episode to speak to him in regards to the file that his buddy on the DOJ despatched. McGee stumbles over defending himself, however Vance simply warns him that he needs to be “completely sure” that Laroche is responsible of one thing or they may all get burned. He leaves McGee in his workplace with the file whereas he takes a name in MTAC. McGee rapidly begins studying.
What did you consider Sam’s return and the updates on Callen and Hetty? What are you hoping to see subsequent in McGee’s try and take down Laroche? Tell us within the feedback part beneath.
NCIS, Mondays, 9/8c, CBS