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Warning: SPOILERS for the NCIS episode “Nexus” are forward!
Final week, Wilmer Valderrama shared that the NCIS Season 22 finale would ship a serious dying, although it fortunately didn’t find yourself being any of the characters I speculated about forward of time. As a substitute, “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 instructed CinemaBlend why he discovered it “intimidating” to shoot what’s unquestionably Parker’s most emotionally devastated second on NCIS but.
There have been quite a lot of twist and turns to account for on this episode following the large 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 surprising. 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 after we do the final present, they’re gonna push issues. However I believed it was a very dynamic ending, and the best way they arrived at it I believed was, as I at all times take into consideration our writers, properly thought out. You did not actually essentially see it coming, which I believe is nice. I used to be glad to have one thing to play that was that intense. It intimidated me as a result of quite a lot 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 companies to NCIS to assist with stopping Nexus. However as talked about, it was truly Carla working the cartel nowadays, with the originally-presumed chief often known as The Butcher being fictional. And whereas Nexus did certainly wish to steal uranium to make a unclean bomb so Carla may get rid of 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 dying.
Carla had found Alden Parker was the one who instructed her son Jason about her prison actions, which is what prompted Jason to flee from her and put him on the trail to dying in a motorbike accident. After kidnapping Parker throughout “Nexus,” it initially appeared like she was going kill him, however not so. As a substitute, Parker got here again to his condo and located his father’s lifeless physique sitting in a chair in entrance of the taking part in TV with blood on his shirt. Once I requested Gary Cole how into the proper 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 a giant transition, perhaps 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 prison actions, was charmed by her, so evidently he let her into her son’s condo 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 instant recognition that it was a homicide, which kicks it up even one other degree. As a result of discovering a useless physique is one factor of a liked one. Discovering a liked one that’s murdered is an entire different animal. As a result of swiftly, you are not simply in shock and grief. You have acquired disgrace and guilt and rage and the whole lot blowing via your head. It’s arduous to course of. And then the need was for it to show into simply vengeful rage. Or a minimum of the premeditation of one thing to return. 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 arduous 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 outdoors the regulation 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 dying certificates. One thing tells me, although, that Parker’s not in the proper mind set to go down that street proper now.
NCIS Season 23 premieres this fall alongside NCIS: Origins Season 2, and we’ll let you realize when the particular day and time is introduced. NCIS: Tony & Ziva will even premiere on Paramount+ across the identical time, whereas NCIS: Sydney Season 3’s arrival isn’t narrowed down simply but.