Warning: SPOILERS for the NCIS episode “Empty Next” are ahead!
In addition to the NCIS Season 21 finale setting up an intriguing mystery concerning Alden Parker’s past, it also saw Jessica Knight agreeing to become the new Chief REACT Instructor at Camp Pendleton. As a result, it was unclear for months if Knight would continue being a leading character in Season 22, although Katrina Law knew early on her character would stick around. Now we know how, as in the final minutes of the Season 22 premiere, Knight decided to turn down a REACT promotion and instead go back to Washington DC to rejoin her NCIS cohorts. Ahead of the episode’s premiere on the 2024 TV schedule, I had the pleasure of speaking with Law, and she opened up about why Knight made that big decision.
It was a given that Jessica Knight would go back to working with Parker, Nick Torres and Timothy McGee again regularly since Katrina Law remains part of NCIS’ main cast. Still, the character needed proper motivation to resume her duties as an NCIS agent, and Law went over that with me in detail, starting with this:
The events of “Empty Nest” saw Alden Parker traveling to central California to ask for Jessica Knight’s help in trying to track down Nick Torres, who’d gone undercover with the Nexus drug cartel, but had his cover blown and was in trouble. Parker flew out to interview one of Knight’s trainees, who was the ex-wife of a killed Nexus enforcer, but events played out that ultimately led Parker and Knight to El Padre, who, as it turned out, was an actual reverend named Edward Pike. However, without any proof that he was in fact the kingpin, Jessica seemingly went rogue and took Pike hostage to coerce him into revealing his true identity and Torres’ whereabouts.
This was eventually revealed as an elaborate ruse to expose Celia Ross, a divorce attorney who was actually working for El Padre, and by the end of the episode, Ross and El Padre were in custody, and Torres was rescued before he was killed for not executing the aforementioned trainee, whom Ross had been representing. But this case also made Jessica Knight realize that being an NCIS agent was what she was meant to be, despite the fact that she’d been offered the REACT promotion after initially thinking she’d be fired. As Katrina Law told me:
Jessica Knight was a REACT agent before she joined in the NCIS team, and in the six months between NCIS Seasons 21 and 22, she did good work training others to carry out the work she once did. But now she’s ready to turn the page on this chapter of her life, with Alden Parker’s arrival providing the clarity she needed: Law concluded this portion of our conversation by saying:
Jessica Knight’s return to Washington D.C. comes as some sketchiness emerges with Inspector General Gabriel LaRoche, who ended up scoring the job that McGee was angling for during this episode. Couple that with Jessica having a long-coming conversation with Jimmy Palmer about their relationship and showrunner Steven D. Binder teasing “World War III” starting in the fourth episode, and there’s already a lot to look forward to this early on into Season 22.
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Adam Holmes
Senior Content Producer
Connoisseur of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, John Wick, MonsterVerse and Doctor Who lore, Adam is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend. He started working for the site back in late 2014 writing exclusively comic book movie and TV-related articles, and along with branching out into other genres, he also made the jump to editing. Along with his writing and editing duties, as well as interviewing creative talent from time to time, he also oversees the assignment of movie-related features. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Journalism, and he’s been sourced numerous times on Wikipedia. He's aware he looks like Harry Potter and Clark Kent.
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