We’ve reached the end of NCIS season 22! And like any good finale, we get answers to season-long questions, closure on some lingering plot-lines, and a surprise gut punch to keep us buzzing over the summer hiatus.

First, it should come as no surprise that eight months ago, the DOJ recruited Gabriel LaRoche (Seamus Dever) to act as a double agent to infiltrate Nexus after the cartel’s DOD mole ended up at the bottom of the Potomac. 

Although he’s a political animal, not a field agent, LaRoche agreed to take the position as NCIS deputy director and to blow Torres’ (Wilmer Valderrama) cover with Nexus, thereby selling his story as a corrupt bureaucrat willing to be the replacement mole. And he would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for that meddling McGee (Sean Murray)!

In the present, Palmer (Brian Dietzen) patches up McGee’s bullet graze following LaRoche’s showdown with the birthday van thief last week and gets the download on what their boss has really been up to. (Given his disappointment over LaRoche betraying everything NCIS stands for, this has to be a relief.)

While McGee feels a little weird that he was chasing a good guy all along, LaRoche stops by to make peace before he officially resigns and presumably goes into hiding forever to avoid the inevitable Nexus assassins. McGee shakes his hand, calls him “Gabriel” (Delilah will be pleased!), and promises that all of LaRoche’s risks won’t be for nothing.

Vance (Rocky Carroll) and Parker (Gary Cole) are decidedly less chill about the situation, and we get the requisite “you ruined an eight-month undercover op”/”you should’ve told us you were in the middle of an eight-month undercover op” argument with the DOJ. In the end, the DOJ secretary orders NCIS to stop Nexus since McGee’s the reason LaRoche is burned. Good thing they have someone else on the inside.

Well, it’s good for everyone but Parker. Their new inside woman is Kansas City mob queen Carla Marino (Rebecca De Mornay), the psychopath (Parker’s words!) responsible for dozens of deaths, including some of his friends.

Gary Cole, Wilmer Valderrama, Rocky Carroll, and Rebecca De Mornay in ‘NCIS’. Sonja Flemming/CBS

Marino ignores Parker’s tantrum and negotiates for full immunity, then says Nexus is after nuclear fuel rods again despite failing in their attempted train heist a few weeks ago. 

If you picked up on a sexual charge to Parker and Marino’s arguing, you’re not the only one. Knight (Katrina Law) brings it up with McGee and Torres before they pivot to investigating The Butcher, Nexus’ mysterious new leader who’s only been captured in one photo and a short audio snippet issuing bloody threats.

Thankfully, Kasie (Diona Reasonover) finds a better lead on the SD card LaRoche got from the thief last week. It contains anonymous chats from an app game called Wordix, which I now desperately want to play, and coordinates to an abandoned Virginia medical clinic that looks like something out of The Last of Us. 

There, Knight and Torres find empty hazardous material containers, a very busy Geiger counter, and the melty remains of a man who was injected with a radioactive substance.

The dead guy worked security for the company that stored the nuclear materials from the train, which means Nexus has uranium now.

Parker and Knight go back to Marino, who’s lounging in her hotel suite in a robe and lace bustier. She admits to speaking with the Butcher a time or two, then sexily eats a strawberry as she invites Parker to join her for breakfast. 

When he declines, she crashes his plant daddy paradise later that day as he and his dad (Francis Xavier McCarthy) are sitting down to watch the Cubs game. Before her arrival, Roman brings up ghost girl Lily and seems to have something to say about her, but he drops it without elaborating.

Marino’s excuse for the drop-by is to deliver a list of possible buyers for the uranium, and she spends the evening charming the pants off the elder Parker (not literally). Roman talks about how proud he is of little Aldie, and Marino talks about her own son, Jason, who died in a motorcycle accident. When she presses the subject, Parker denies ever meeting Jason, and Roman says he understands how hard it is to move on from a loss like that without someone to blame. It’s alllll foreshadowing, but we’re not quite there yet.

The next morning, Parker yet again interrupts team gossiping about him and Marino so they can divide and conquer. Torres and Knight are tasked with questioning the head of Messiahs of Purity, a white supremacist group that’s a likely buyer for the uranium. But their polo-shirted leader (Chris Webster) swears the cartel’s keeping the uranium for its own use. (He’s also unaware that “messiah” is a Hebrew word, and having Torres and Knight be the ones to interview a proud racist had to be intentional on the show’s part, right?)

Parker, meanwhile, is accompanying Marino to Kansas City, where she’s reluctantly agreed to meet with The Butcher. She’s terrified as she and Parker head toward the airport and what she believes to be certain death, despite their security detail of a huge FBI agent and an even huger NCIS agent. Hope those guys kissed their loved ones goodbye this morning because something tells me they’re not long for this world.

Diona Reasonover in ‘NCIS’. Sonja Flemming/CBS

Well, I was halfway right. Just as Kasie and co. determine that their footage of The Butcher was AI-generated, FBI guy shoots NCIS guy, and Marino drops her terrified act to collect Parker’s gun.

She’s the real head of Nexus, and she and her triggerman drive Parker to the quiet intersection where Jason was hit by a car after fleeing Kansas City. 

Like Roman, she wants somebody to blame, and she’s settled on Parker, who told Jason that his mother was a criminal, causing him to run. She’s got Parker on his knees, execution-style, but she pistol-whips him instead, saying a bullet’s too easy.

Why’d they leave Parker mostly unharmed at a nearby convenience store? No time for that! NCIS needs to get to the meeting Marino set for the heads of the four crime families in her hotel suite! (She arranged the meetup in a group chat, which amuses me to no end.)

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While Knight and Torres exchange gunfire with Kansas City goons at the hotel loading dock, Parker and McGee try to convince the mob bosses to please exit the hotel room as there’s likely a uranium bomb nearby.

Sure enough, the device is tucked under a room service cart, its blinking red light visible under the tablecloth. With only seconds left on the red digital readout, Parker currently guesses that the five-digit deactivation code spells out “JASON.” Day saved! And although Marino’s in the wind, there’s now a price on her head courtesy of the other four families. 

Parker, still confused about why his old KC nemesis let him go, returns home and finds Roman slumped in one of his comfortable chairs, dead of a gunshot to the heart. His grief curdles when he sees lipstick on the wineglass next to his father’s, and with a bellow of rage, he dashes the chattering television set to the ground.

Stray shots

• I told you this episode tied up a billion loose ends! The Nexus storyline’s been simmering all season, and it looks like revenge is on the agenda in season 23. Oh, and sorry about talking up the sexual tension between Parker and the bad lady who killed his dad.
• The real tragedy of Roman’s death? He didn’t get to watch his team play one last game thanks to Marino’s party crashing — and the Cubbies are having such a good season! 
• Speaking of Alden, Palmer followed through on his promise to help track down his mother’s burial site. She’s now interred in Milwaukee after a Chicago freeway expansion required the relocation of her cemetery. As part of his research, Palmer gets his hands on Mama Parker’s death certificate and discovers something that doesn’t add up, but we won’t learn why that math ain’t mathing until the show’s return in the fall.
• So if the NCIS deputy director chair is vacant again, will McGee finally get the nod? More importantly, would we as viewers want him to? Spend a couple of months pondering that question, and I’ll see you back here in the fall!