In the NCIS Season 21 finale, Gary Cole’s Alden Parker experienced a strange vision involving a young girl named Lily while he was gravely injured. Although some light was shed on this mystery during Season 22, there are still a handful of questions left to be answered when Season 23 starts running on the 2025 TV schedule. Thankfully, NCIS showrunner Steven D. Binder has cleared up that this particular storyline won’t overlap with another one.
For those of you wondering if the Lily mystery would end up tying into Parker’s conflict with Kanas City Mob boss Carla Marino, whom he believes killed his father in the NCIS Season 22 finale. Binder informed TVLine that this isn’t the case, saying:
We’ve done a lot of thinking about this, and it felt like these should be separate stories.
I’m so glad Steven D. Binder and the rest of the NCIS creative team reached this decision. There have already been enough twists and turns with the Lily storyline that having Carla Marino suddenly involved with it somehow would be too convoluted. Besides, the Carla storyline is set to be wrapped up pretty early into Season 23, with Timothy McGee, Nick Torres, Jessica Knight, Kasie Hines and Jimmy Palmer looking like they’ll aid Alden Parker in tracking down this woman who’s been a thorn in his side stretching back to his FBI days.
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The Lily mystery, on the other hand, still has a ways to go before it’s resolved, though Steven D. Binder didn’t clarify if this will happen in NCIS Season 23 or if it could even stretch into a potential Season 24. The last major update on this girl came in the episode “Moonlit,” where Parker learned that she wasn’t something purely created from his imagination, but rather someone in real life who was photographed at the site where his mother, Eleanor Parker, died in a drunk driving incident. Additionally, Palmer got ahold of Eleanor death certificate in the Season 22 finale and told Knight that “something doesn’t add up with it, but we have yet to learn what that is.
So where do things go from here with this aspect of NCIS? Well, Steven D. Binder also said that the strangeness of Eleanor’s death certificate will “unfold quickly” in Season 23. We can also expect to see more flashbacks to Alden Parker’s youth and meet his sister Harriet, who will be played in the present day by Nancy Travis. As for the Carla Marino storyline, Binder added that the new season will “open with a lot of heat, a lot of action — and we’re hoping to not let up.”
NCIS Season 23 will kick off on Tuesday, October 14 at 8 pm ET. It will be followed that same night by the premieres of NCIS: Origins Season 2 and NCIS: Sydney Season 3, and the new spinoff NCIS: Tony & Ziva is currently releasing new episodes on Thursdays to fans who have a Paramount+ subscription.
