Tonight on CBS NCIS Hawaiʻi returns with an all-new Monday, May 16, 2022, season 1 episode 21 called, “Switchback,” and we have your weekly NCIS Hawaiʻi recap below. In tonight’s NCIS Hawaiʻi season 1 episode 21, “Switchback,” as per the CBS synopsis,“Captain Milius (Enver Gjokaj) returns to Hawai’i for a secret prisoner exchange operation and brings in Jane to be his personal security escort in the Philippines where the exchange will take place, on the penultimate episode and part one of the two-part season one finale.”
Tonight’s NCIS Hawaiʻi Recap begins now – Refresh Page often to get the most current updates!
Marine Corporal Mason Cartwright was killed after he tried to intervene in a domestic dispute. He saw a couple arguing and he tried to step in, but he got stabbed for it and he was killed before he hit the ground. Something that didn’t sound like an accident. It sounded like someone was experienced with a knife. They knew how to make one fatal stab wound. They also knew how to avoid cameras as they ran off and so they didn’t like a panicked couple. The warring couple thing was probably just a diversion. It was a diversion to grab Cartwright’s attention. They knew he would intervene and they wanted to kill him. The question was why?
Why Cartwright? The island was full of servicemen and women. The killers went after Cartwright specifically. Cartwright was on the island for a training mission and he would return to Manila for his posting there once the training was done. But he had “training” at five am the next morning. There’s no reason why Cartwright would be out late at night the night before having to wake up so early and so Tennant and her team went to this special training. They wanted to ask questions. They were instead met with detainment. Milius is in town. He was on the island because he was a part of a secret prisoner exchange with Russia.
Milius was exchanging Anton Breskov, who was caught by the American government for espionage, for Thomas Kelly. Kelly was simply a journalist. He was detained by the Russians on false charges and there’s no telling what his condition is over them. The sooner the Americans get back to Kelly, the safer Kelly will be. The team knew this. They also wanted to know the part Cartwright played in everything. Cartwright wasn’t supposed to have a part as it turns out. Cartwright overheard about the prisoner exchange at a bar. He reported it. The team on the prisoner exchange found out there was a leak and so they asked Cartwright to come to Hawaii to be there for one of the many meetings.
Cartwright was killed before he could make it to the meeting. Which left Milius nervous. Milius counts Kelly as a good friend and he didn’t want anything to happen to him if the prisoner exchange fell through. Milius needed help to make sure everything happened the way it was supposed to. He turned to Tennant. Tennant and Milius had a fling. He told her that he’d call if he was ever back on the island and that call never came. Tennant decided to ignore that little tidbit because there were other things to be concerned about. Like their killer. Someone was trying to stop that prisoner exchange from happening.
Milius was so worried about the exchange that he asked Tennant to act as an escort to the exchange. Tennant knows Russian and the language is spoken in Manila. She was also a former CIA. She knew how to handle herself in a crisis. Tennant got them a flight on a Coast Guard carrier. Milius and Tennant flew out with a security team as well as their prison. The prison was by the way very chatty. Breskov practically bragged about his days as a spy. Though he admitted he had nothing to do with Cartwright’s death. Breskov has been imprisoned for more than a year. He had nothing to do with arranging someone’s murder.
There was another thing that stood out. While Tennant was in Manila with Milius, the rest of the team had caught the couple that killed Cartwright. They later tracked them down before they could get on a flight off the island. The couple was actually a couple. They were a part of a socialist group in Oregon. It was probably a front for a Russian connection. Everyone believed that the Russians wanted to hold onto Kelly. They just couldn’t figure out why. Tennant and Milius went to the prisoner exchange. There was a tense incident in which both sides pulled out guns. And Tennant was able to talk everyone down.
They swapped prisoners. They both went back to their planes. But something was wrong with Kelly. He began seizing and he was foaming at the mouth. The Russians did something to him. They possibly poisoned him, but why do that when they were already going to do a prisoner exchange. This erratic behavior on the Russians’ side had made no sense. Why kill a man after you got what you wanted?
