NCIS Season 16 (2018)

Season 16 of NCIS first aired between September 25th 2018 to May 21st 2019, opening on a cliffhanger as the team search for their missing director Leon Vance. At the end of Season 15, we saw Nigel Hakim had kidnapped Leon and held him hostage on a private jet, laying responsibility on him for the deaths of his siblings in Afghanistan. This is the first season without Abby, as we see Casey Hines bring her magic to the lab, and a trail of clues leads to a surprise appearance in the finale.

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The season begins 4 weeks after Leon’s disappearance, as Torres’ stake out abroad offers no results. When the director is seen embroiled in a bank heist, suspicions are confirmed that he’s being held on home soil. He sends a series of cryptic messages, firstly within the robbery and then in a ransom video, as he blinks upon certain words to spell out Kayla, giving a warning that her life in in danger. Despite being given security, she’s still forced to defend herself until Gibbs kills her attacker.

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A string of bombings hit Navy recruitment centres and an Ohio movie theatre, whilst one of Hakim’s henchmen reveals he’s a CIA agent, getting Vance a cellphone so he can contact Gibbs. He warns Leroy about Nigel’s interest in the Bethesda nuclear station, and the team travel there, as the building is put into lockdown. This was part of the plan all along however, as hidden in the lockdown coding is a Trojan horse, linked back to their encryption service which gives the order to detonate. The CIA agent is in fact working with Hakim to achieve this.

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The only way to shut the command down is to sever the connection to their encryption servers, at a company called Glowbeam which use lava lamps to protect data. Torres is already at the facility and takes great joy in smashing all the lamps to shut the servers down. Jack Sloane interrogates British Ambassador Rigg, ready to use torture if necessary, but Rigg makes her feel guilty for this before turning a gun on her and revealing Sloane’s suspicions all along.

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Jack is delivered to Vance’s holding place, and it’s revealed this was the objective all along, so they could track her location to find their director. Hakim knows it’s over and becomes irate, as Sloane revels in his misery. Gibbs and the team burst in, killing a bunch of Hakim’s men and taking him and his mother into custody. Vance is finally reunited with Kayla and they share a warm embrace, as Jack visits the graves of her fallen Wingo comrades, placing her box of memories in the earth.

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We start the season with Casey in an interim position, though she soon becomes a permanent member of NCIS. I warmed to her instantly and I think Diana does bring a similar energy to the show as Pauley, but it’s completely different at the same time. One of her first cases is a hot tub death, which challenges the whole team because of the level of decomposition this encourages, and another episode sees her covered in bug bites after looking for evidence in a river. She creates a presentation room in the back of the lab, which brings an interesting new dynamic to the space.

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One of my favourite shows from this season was ‘Once Upon A Tim’, as we see younger McGee in the 1990s grappling with his identity. It’s a great episode for tackling toxic masculinity and generational trauma, as Tim’s Dad refuses to accept his love of the arts until revealing his father was the very same, dashing his dreams of becoming a dancer. The case revolves around coding Tim had made years before, which is activated again when he turns on his old computer in the present day; it’s highly sort after because it’s able to bypass the military’s digital defences.

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Another brilliant episode was ‘Hail & Farewell’, as Gibbs is implicated for the murder of his ex-fiancée Ellen Wallace when her body turns up over 15 years after she was believed to have died in the 9/11 attack, Leroy’s blood on her clothes. I loved the scene when Gibbs is sat in the interrogation room, his whole team hesitant to question him, and it was also really cool to see McGee defy him for the first time and kick him off the case because of his own personal involvement.

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A major storyline this season saw Leon fall in love again, for a woman called Mallory he meets at physiotherapy - however, the viewer soon becomes aware that her intentions aren’t pure, as she’s pretending to be injured so she can get close to him. Later on, it’s revealed that the CIA have tasked her with obtaining his laptop, so he can be investigated for funds that been embezzled into an offshore account.

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The truth of the situation is that the money is being used by a group of judges, headed by Miles Deakin, who have been hiring mercenaries to kill people who have escaped justice through the courts. One such person on the list is Gibbs, which prompts him to have to reveal to his team about the guy he murdered years ago, avenging Kelly and Shannon’s deaths. This shakes him at the end of the season, as he grapples with how others will perceive him now the secret is out.

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This all comes to light through an excellent episode called ‘Judge, Jury…’, as evidence which was unlawfully obtained tests positive for a case unresolved 30 years before, of a serial killer who poisoned a man and several children with icecreams. He does get off the hook, but is signed for death by Deakin and his committee, and this points NCIS in the right direction. Eventually, Gibbs is able to use the same pendant Mallory used to record Vance to get a confession from Deacon so he can be arrested.

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Many of the characters go through journey’s of self-discovery in Season 16; Sloane reconnects with her daughter, through a case about a shooting in a hospital. She’s quickly become one of my favourite characters, aided by the fact I think Maria Bello is a brilliant actress. Ellie also does some soul searching, as she becomes fixated on learning more about her predecessor Ziva, who is found to have left many diaries in an outhouse she was renting out years before. But our surprise entrance in the finale happens to be the former Mossad agent herself, risen from the dead as she warns Gibbs he’s in danger.

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It’s been hard to write about this season, simply because choosing a favourite episode was near impossible. I didn’t know how I’d find it without Abby and with David McCallum making smaller, more sporadic appearances but the quality of writing and NCIS’s ability to reinvent itself still holds strong. The special features includes an introduction for Kasey Hines, a behind-the-scenes featurette and a cast conversation led by Kevin Frazier, alongside pilot episodes for Magnum P.I and Star Trek: Discovery, which I thought was really cool.