NCIS Season 21’s Finale May Have Set Up A Main Cast Member Exit, But I’m Thinking More About the Parker Mysteries Established For Season 22

Warning: SPOILERS for the NCIS episode “Reef of Madness” are ahead!

As a result of last year’s WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes delaying production, NCIS Season 21 consisted of just 10 episodes, making it the shortest season yet of the popular CBS show. So while it may seem like just yesterday fans were seeing how that Nick Torres personal arc from the Season 20 finale was resolved, this latest wrapped up tonight on the 2024 TV schedule with “Reef of Madness.”

However, as one would hope for from a season finale, this NCIS episode was more eventful than your standard installment. And I’m not just talking about how it followed Jessica Knight and Alden Parker being trapped aboard a decommissioned Navy ship that was set to soon be turned into an artificial reef, but ended up containing three bodies. By the end of “Reef of Madness,” the former’s NCIS future was called into question, and some intriguing mysteries about the latter were teased to surely be explored more in-depth in Season 22.

Jessica Knight May Be Leaving The Team

When Jessica Knight was introduced in NCIS Season 18, she was a member of the Washington Navy Yard’s REACT team, but all her teammates were tragically killed in an explosion. After figuring out who committed the murders, she took over Ellie Bishop’s spot on the team, but it seems as though Katrina Law’s character is also on her way out… maybe.

You’ll recall back in “The Plan” that Knight turned down the opportunity to take over her father’s job as Special Agent in Charge of the agency’s Far East office, but the prospect of her potentially taking another job down the line got me worried about her and Jimmy’s relationship. Well, I was right to feel that way, because in “Reef of Madness,” Director Leon Vance informed Knight that Brian Mooney, Knight’s old REACT instructor at Camp Pendleton, took the Far East job. Knight was now the top candidate to take over Mooney’s instructor position, but Vance needed her answer asap. Knight had applied for the job after her team died, but a few years later, she wasn’t sure whether she still wanted it.

Upon learning that Knight might take the REACT job, Jimmy Palmer, who’d been preparing for her to take another job elsewhere someday, had a bit of a “meltdown” and decided to preemptively break up with her. They both later acknowledged that he’d overreacted, but following her experience aboard that ship and some heart-to-heart conversations with an injured Parker (more on that soon), Knight realized that Jimmy might have had a point, and when Vance asked for her answer, she told him, “Hell yeah, sir. Let’s do it.”

So now Jessica Knight is Camp Pendleton’s new REACT instructor, but does that mean Katrina Law is actually leaving NCIS? Well, that question’s not being answered just yet, as co-showrunner Steven D. Binder told TV Line that “we think the audience will be satisfied with where they see this go,” and Law said that viewers “better tune in for that season opener!” My guess is this is a bait and switch, and Knight will either change her mind in the Season 22 premiere or return to the team after some time away, but we won’t learn if that’s the case or not until the 2024-2025 TV season kicks off.

Some Mysteries About Parker’s Childhood Were Teased  

This was an especially brutal episode for Alden Parker, because in the midst of him and Knight being trapped in the bowels of that ship by one of the culprits in “Reef of Madness,” his legs were pinned down by a collapsing pipe. It was already bad enough he had to get back on the ship to acquire a piece of evidence, as he “hates” ships. But adding insult on top of injury, by the time Knight was able to move the pipe off his legs, he was bleeding badly, and he’d die if she didn’t get him medical attention.

The good news is that Gary Cole’s character made it out of the NCIS Season 21 finale alive, and it’s probably safe to assume that his legs aren’t permanently injured, though I can’t say that with 100% certainty just yet. However, before he and Knight were found by their teammates, some especially intriguing mysteries concerning his past were thrown in, and I’ll be thinking about them for a while.

First, although Parker admitted that he knows a lot about ships thanks to his father, he wasn’t willing to share any details about his mother with Knight. Later on in the episode, Parker started hallucinating a little girl named Lilly. He wouldn’t elaborate about her with Knight either, but viewers saw a flashback of Parker as a child playing hide and seek with Lilly aboard a similar-looking ship. This flashback also briefly showed Parker’s mother, though we didn’t really learn anything about her other than she apparently told him to stop the game of hide and seek all those years ago.

While there’s no guarantee that these Parker mysteries will be brought back up in the NCIS Season 22 premiere, it stands to reason they’ll eventually be brought back. Ideally that will be sometime during the next season, as it would be a pain to wait years for answers. But at the bare minimum, we don’t have to worry about Gary Cole going anywhere.

Once concrete details about NCIS Season 22 start coming in, we’ll pass them along. Until then, remember that you can stream the entirety of NCIS and its spinoffs with a Paramount+ subscription.