‘NCIS: Tony & Ziva’ Episode 6 Recap: The Spy Storyline Just Isn’t Working Out for This Spin-Off md24

Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for NCIS: Tony & Ziva Episode 6.As NCIS: Tony & Ziva goes past the midpoint this season, it takes a break from its high-stakes central conceit to focus on Tony (Michael Weatherly) and Ziva’s (Cote de Pablo) daughter. After Tali’s (Isla Gie) life was threatened in the premiere, the couple sends her to a safe house with her babysitter Sophie (Lara Rossi), who is also a former MI6 agent, while they go traipsing across Europe to clear their names and snuff out the real danger. Throughout the first half of the spin-off, we only see Tali through the phone screen of FaceTime calls or through nostalgic flashbacks, but Tony & Ziva Episode 6 gives us a glimpse behind the curtain.

‘NCIS: Tony & Ziva’ Episode 6 Shows Us Tali’s Side of the Story

Episode 6 kicks off in 2020, when Tony, Ziva, and Tali go on vacation to a peaceful house in the woods. However, it quickly starts on a terrifying note as the couple walks in on Tali paying with a gun strapped to the underside of a table. Turns out, this was one of Ziva’s safe houses, and she hadn’t properly cleared it of all weapons before they arrived. The screen cuts to nine days before the fake wedding, when Tali’s life is threatened, and she is sent to the safe house with Sophie, the very same one five years ago. We get a montage of those nine days, including Tali’s side of the phone calls with her parents and her incessant boredom.

During those nine days, Tali complains about the lack of internet and her electronics dying, while Sophie calmly tells her to find her own entertainment. One of the days, Tali finds an electronic watch that her dad left at the house last time he was there and remembers his Lilo & Stitch quote: “Ohana means family, and family means no one gets left behind.” On one of the other days, specifically Sophie’s birthday, they also find out there’s a wasp’s nest in the front yard, but leave it alone.

A couple of days before the present timeline, Tali decides she needs to assuage her boredom by charging the watch, but doesn’t want to tell Sophie about it. She fakes her period, which causes Sophie to go to the store to buy sanitary products and allows Tali to have enough time to charge the watch. What she doesn’t know is that because the watch is a cellular model connected to Tony’s old number, it pings off against cell towers and compromises their location. As such, we return to the present timeline, where four strangers enter the house and Tali and Sophie hide in the panic room.

Tali’s Boredom Puts Her in Danger in ‘NCIS: Tony & Ziva’ Episode 6

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While Tali and Sophie are holed up in the panic room, Tony and Ziva are driving furiously towards the safe house from the prison after receiving the voice message. In the tense car, Tony accuses Ziva of never liking Henry (James D’Arcy), who is now dead, to which Ziva admits she was jealous of his closeness with Tali as an honorary uncle. They hit a roadblock, literally, and are forced to go off the beaten path, delaying their arrival at the safe house.

Meanwhile, Sophie and Tali are trying to figure out how to get to safety before the intruders can find the panic room. Tali squeezes through a vent that leads to the front yard with Sophie’s phone to call for help, but when she gets reception, the phone’s notifications alert two of the intruders. One of them sprains his foot in a rabbit hole, and they eventually leave, but Tali is spooked and returns to the panic room. However, a wasp from the front yard gets caught on her jacket, eventually stinging Sophie, who has an anaphylactic allergy to them.

Realizing her Epipen is outside on the coffee table, Sophie steels herself to help Tali escape before the reaction sets in. She instructs Tali to leave the panic room and run to the nearest town while she distracts the intruders using the computer system. Tali manages to sneak out, but when faced with the door and the Epipen on the table, she recalls her father’s words about nobody being left behind. Although she manages to retrieve the Epipen and save Sophie’s life, in doing so, it exposed the location of the panic room to the intruders.

This Small ‘NCIS’ Family Is Finally Reunited in Episode 6

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Pierre (Emmanuel Bonami), the leader of the attackers, puts two and two together and finds the vent in the backyard that leads to the panic room. He throws tear gas inside, forcing Sophie and Tali to escape the panic room and confront the intruders head-on. Tali escapes the house and jumps into their car, managing to run over one of the attackers. Meanwhile, under the house’s malfunctioning system of smoke and flashing lights, Sophie has a full-blown shoot-out with them. After incapacitating two, she runs outside and has an arduous fight with Pierre, eventually choking him out.

At that moment, Claudette (Amita Suman) finally arrives at the safe house and is relieved to see her girlfriend, Sophie, alive. As they share a sweet kiss, Tony and Ziva also make their entrance, and they tightly embrace Tali, reunited after nine days of chaos and danger. Naturally, Tony and Ziva insist that Tali be sent to another safe house, but she refuses with a stubbornness she definitely inherited from her parents. We are also privy to a touching moment between Tali and Sophie, where the latter thanks the young girl for saving her life.

‘NCIS: Tony & Ziva’ Episode 6 Ends With More Questions and Grief

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After this episode fleshes out the world through Tali’s eyes, it returns to the central mystery, where Tony and Ziva get an update from their favorite hackers, Claudette and Boris (Maximilian Osinkski). They find out that the drone that rogue Interpol agents Jonah (Julian Ovenden) and Martine (Nassima Benchicou) stole was returned to Reigning Fire. They figured out it was likely a Trojan horse trap; when the company plugs in the drone to do a diagnostic test, it would likely be carrying 9.4 that would give Jonah access to Reigning Fire’s entire system. They realize that Jonah is likely targeting the company’s shady owner, Aaron Graves (Sean Pertwee), but the next step in their mission is finding out why.

We also get a glimpse into Jonah and Martine’s current circumstances, where Jonah finds out Pierre’s attack on Tali failed. However, Martine still doesn’t know about the attack since she had previously disapproved of Jonah’s tactics of targeting children. As lies continue to build in their relationship, we cut back to Tony, who finally has the space to grieve Henry’s death and sacrifice. He leans on Tali’s and Ziva’s unconditional support and ends the episode on a gut-wrenching note.