Warning: SPOILERS for the NCIS episode “Nexus” are forward!
Final week, Wilmer Valderrama shared that the NCIS Season 22 finale would ship a significant loss of life, 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 top of the Kansas Metropolis mob. It was one hell of a game-changing scene to wrap up this season, and Cole advised CinemaBlend why he discovered it “intimidating” to shoot what’s unquestionably Parker’s most emotionally devastated second on NCIS but.
There have been a number of twist and turns to account for on this episode following the massive shakeup to the LaRoche storyline delivered final week, however arguably probably 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 right now:
I imply, we all know after we do the final present, they’re gonna push issues. However I assumed it was a very dynamic ending, and the best way they arrived at it I assumed was, as I at all times take into consideration our writers, nicely thought out. You did not actually essentially see it coming, which I believe is sweet. I used to be glad to have one thing to play that was that intense. It intimidated me as a result of a number of issues needed to occur rapidly 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 providers to NCIS to assist with stopping Nexus. However as talked about, it was truly Carla operating the cartel as of late, with the originally-presumed chief generally known as The Butcher being fictional. And whereas Nexus did certainly need to steal uranium to make a unclean bomb so Carla may eradicate the heads of the opposite 4 crime households, she was additionally insistent on exacting revenge for the function she believes Parker performed in her son’s loss of life.
Carla had found Alden Parker was the one who advised her son Jason about her felony actions, which is what brought about Jason to flee from her and put him on the trail to dying in a bike 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:
Effectively, the one factor I acknowledged was that simply as you described it, there was an enormous transition, possibly even two transitions, and that was a little 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? Effectively, earlier within the episode, Carla stopped by Parker’s place as he and his father had been having dinner, and she or he invited herself in. Roman, unaware of Carla’s felony 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 fast recognition that it was a homicide, which kicks it up even one other degree. As a result of discovering a lifeless physique is one factor of a beloved one. Discovering a beloved one that’s murdered is a complete different animal. As a result of rapidly, you are not simply in shock and grief. You have acquired disgrace and guilt and rage and all the things blowing by way of your head. It’s laborious 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 laborious to say how quickly this will likely be adopted up on in NCIS Season 23, however I’m already curious to see if Parker will step exterior the legislation 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 unique loss of life certificates. One thing tells me, although, that Parker’s not in the precise mind set to go down that highway proper now.
NCIS Season 23 premieres this fall alongside NCIS: Origins Season 2, and we’ll let when the particular day and time is introduced. NCIS: Tony & Ziva will even premiere on Paramount+ across the similar time, whereas NCIS: Sydney Season 3’s arrival isn’t narrowed down simply but.
