NCIS Just Delivered Its Most Shocking Cliffhanger in Years

NCIS Season 23 is off to a rapid start, as Alden Parker’s (Gary Cole) life hangs in the balance amid the hunt for Carla Marino (Rebecca De Mornay). The Kansas City mob leader murdered Parker’s father at the end of last season, prompting a desperate search for Marino in the two-part opening of Season 23. In the premiere, Parker and his team stay under the radar and on Marino’s tail, but Alden is in mortal danger.

Carla established herself as a powerful crime boss and a longtime foe of Alden Parker last season. Carla holds Parker responsible for her son’s death, which is why she kidnapped him in the NCIS Season 22 finale and then murdered his father, Roman (Francis X. McCarthy). While Parker was steadfast in his quest for vengeance, showing a darker side of the character, his off-the-books antics could get him killed.

Alden Parker Faces a Fatal Attack in NCIS Season 23’s Premiere

Image via CBS

After Parker Sr.’s murder, Alden is hellbent on capturing Carla Marino in the premiere of NCIS Season 23. While Timothy McGee (Sean Murray) urges Parker to get some rest, Alden refuses to sleep until he finds Carla. He even starts to go off the books, calling in bomb threats to all major transit hubs along the Eastern seaboard to stop Carla as her life falls apart, and she grows desperate to leave the country.

Working under the radar after Director Leon Vance (Rocky Carroll) benches Parker, the Major Case Response Team (MCRT) locates Carla’s SUV. It leads them to her accomplice, who tells Parker, McGee, and Nick Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) that Carla is planning one last big score on a ship called the Quentin. That’s where the team finds Carla on security footage, but they also locate Parker, who has boarded the Quentin to capture Carla personally.

NCIS formulates a plan to extract Parker and eliminate Carla. However, once Vance alerts the Navy, they take over. Harriet Parker (Nancy Travis), Alden’s sister, takes it on herself to personally oversee the mission, but rather than show mercy on her brother in the wake of their father’s death, by-the-book Harriet gets her orders to destroy the ship and executes them, ending the episode with the command, “Yankee 1 and 2, you are cleared hot. Fire!”

Harriet told Vance to give her another option, but when he didn’t immediately present one, she proved that she put duty over family. Harriet gives a strike team the command to attack the ship as the episode concludes with a “To Be Continued” card. While NCIS always has something in store when it comes to its twists and turns, Parker’s life is genuinely at risk, and, as far as the audience can tell, Alden will go down with Carla’s ship.

Alden & Harriet Parker’s Drama Is Central to the Story

Image via CBS

The emotional core of the episode exists between Parker and Harriet, both processing their father’s death. The premiere begins with a flashback to 1977, featuring Alden and Harriet in their adolescence, with scenes of young Parker in jail. The moment shows how Alden’s criminal history has been a central conflict between Alden and his sister, with the younger Harriet expressing concern for how it affects their father’s health.

The distance between Alden and his sister carries into adulthood. Harriet, a three-star admiral, holds Alden’s juvenile record against him. It’s core to their conflict that, while Parker works for NCIS, Harriet distinguishes her service from his. The admiral talks about her brother’s record to Dr. Jimmy Palmer (Brian Dietzen) with disgrace, and Alden makes a similar comment about Harriet not recognizing his contributions to Jessica Knight (Katrina Law).

The sibling drama is central to the episode because, after Harriet takes over the mission to eliminate Carla and the Quentin, she holds her brother’s fate in her hands. The flashbacks help viewers to understand that Alden and Harriet’s contrasting approaches to maintaining national security run deep, stemming from their formative years. It’s definitive to the emotional core of the premiere that Harriet is willing to take Parker out with Carla, bringing new stakes to NCIS.

Can Parker Survive the Attack on Carla Marino’s Ship?

Image via CBS

The biggest question after the NCIS Season 23 premiere is whether Parker will survive the attack that will blow the Quentin out of the water. It seems unlikely that Parker will die and Cole will exit the series, especially since NCIS typically announces major character exits, like Mark Harmon’s exit as Leroy Jethro Gibbs, ahead of time. Still, Parker is in a truly impossible situation. Unless he gets off the Quentin, the Navy will seemingly take Alden as collateral damage.

Still, it’s NCIS, so there’s a good chance that Parker gets out of this. The last time audiences saw Alden, he had backed himself into a room full of something that shocked him. Viewers don’t know what he found yet, but perhaps Parker discovered something that enabled him to protect himself or signaled him to abort ship. Harriet informed the team that there were weapons aboard the vessel, so perhaps Parker stumbled upon something he could leverage.

Audiences will be in for an intense end to the story next week when NCIS returns with the second half of the season opener. It’s likely to resolve the aftermath of Roman Parker’s murder, both in how Harriet and Alden are dealing with the tragedy and how the hunt for Marino panned out. NCIS needs to deliver a miraculous snafu or massive twist so that Parker can survive to hash things out with Harriet, and it’s been known to provide both.

NCIS airs on Tuesday nights at 8 pm Eastern on CBS.