NCIS: Sydney Boss Teases Many Blasts From The Past In Season 3, Plus A Roswell-Ian Adventure
Ready to go back Down Under, NCIS: Sydney fans?
The NCIS franchise's Australia-set offshoot will return next week and — fingers crossed — will deliver closure re: that cliffhanger of a finale we were left with last season. To quickly recap: Mackey realized that Etienne was in league with some seriously dangerous terrorists and that he was controlling Rankin via remote-control pacemaker. When Mackey confronted Etienne, the result was a huge fight at the restaurant where they were eating dinner; the all-out brawl ended when JD showed up and shot Etienne in the head. The incident took a toll on both JD and Mackey; meanwhile, Blue came home to find a woman sitting in her living room — who is she?
Per the premiere's official synopsis, "The discovery of two missing U.S. Navy aviators adrift in the Coral Sea leads the team to expose a sinister terrorist plot." Below, showrunner Morgan O'Neill gives us the lowdown on what to expect when the show comes back for Season 3 on Tuesday at 10/9c (CBS).
TVLINE | How much time has passed since we last tuned in?
MORGAN O'NEILL | I would say three weeks. It's pretty hot on the heels, which is good considering Season 2 ends on somewhat of a cliffhanger.
TVLINE | What's the situation there with Blue and Aspira, the woman she found inside her flat?
Season 2 ends with Blue coming home, we think the world is resolved for the better, and suddenly the light turns on and there's a strange woman with a lot of hair sitting there looking back at her from her living room. We've got to ask ourselves why. We've seen beforehand, if you've watched the show closely, that Blue is very, very private, very secretive. She's got a ton of locks on her doors. She's keen to keep where she lives and how she lives a secret. The fact that there's someone who has breached that and is sitting in her living room waiting to speak to her is obviously pretty shocking for Blue. Very early on in the third season of the show, we will resolve both who Aspira is and what she means to Blue. I really don't want to spoil that reveal, but what it definitely does is take us on a deep, deep dive into Blue's backstory. We resolve a whole bunch of the breadcrumbs that we've been laying down over the first two seasons, and I think it'll shock some people where we go.
TVLINE | But three weeks later, have the women reached a certain peace, or is it prickly between them?
I would say that they have reached an understanding, but it's not the understanding that anyone will have predicted. It feels to me like Aspira is an intruder into Blue's world, and we'll work out just how much of an intruder she is. It's existential for Blue.
TVLINE | Last we spoke, you said that some form of a third party would be joining the Evie/DeShawn mix. What do you want to say about this person?
Look, we are thrilled, we have a bunch of guest cast that we're introducing into the show across the third season, and we meet one of them pretty early on. [This character's] arrival really throws the cat amongst the pigeons, in particular, in terms of the relationship between Evie and DeShawn, and from that perspective, their dynamic is challenged on a number of levels. You won't have to sit through too many minutes of Season 2 to meet our new arrival.
TVLINE | Is this a blast from someone's past, or is it a brand-new character?
It's funny you should say "blast from the past." It's not a blast from the past, but there's a lot of "blast" that goes on with it!
TVLINE | I know that CBS is deathly allergic to sharing specific episode counts, but can you say that this season will be "bigger" than Season 2?
Last time we spoke, I said that our ambition is to be more ambitious, and the show has expanded in every facet, including the number of episodes. So it's an absolute statement of fact to say that Season 3 of NCIS: Sydney is far and away the biggest yet.
TVLINE | How are Mackey and JD's respective mindsets? Are her walls up higher than ever? Is he still a sad divorced dad?
I'm not asking you to do my work for me, but where did YOU think we left them at the end of Season 2?
TVLINE | As I told you the last time we spoke, I felt that Mackey was stung by the Etienne betrayal, and JD was probably thinking about Mackey having a bigger role in his life.
As you'll remember, we leave her sitting in a cab thinking something, and we leave JD in his best friend's garage where he's been living, post-breakup with his wife. When they come back together, you'll find that they've done what most people do in that situation. They're two attractive, professional, single people, and they point-blank refuse to acknowledge that they're any of those things, so they try as best they can to pretend like there is nothing happening. And that only adds fuel to that fire. Mackey takes one route, JD takes a very different route. JD kind of overdoes it and overcompensates for his newfound single status, and Mackey ostensibly encourages that. But deep down, you have to question, "Who's fooling who?"
TVLINE | Will there be any recurring, Rankin-like character in Season 3?
There is a recurring Rankin character in Season 3. Our lovable and slightly unknowable CIA character drops back into the story, a couple of episodes in, to throw a blanket over the story as only he can — and by that, I mean that he brings a whole new perspective to it because he's not entirely knowable.
TVLINE | But he's been largely redeemed at this point, no?
Yes, largely redeemed — but do you know many intelligence operatives personally? Redemption always comes with an asterisk, which is to say that part of the DNA of anyone who works in intelligence is that despite the fact that you think you know them, you never entirely know them. As a result, can you ever entirely trust them? And we'll find that out in Season 3.
TVLINE | Any personal runners for any of the characters beyond Blue and whatever Mackey and JD are going through?
I would say that the overall theme for the season is that it doesn't matter how fast you run, your past is always going to catch up with you, and the faster you run, the higher the velocity of impact when it does. In some ways, all of our characters are running from their past, and without getting too heavy, the season in some ways confronts the reality that if you don't face your past, your, your past will come and face you and kick you in the teeth. This season does a lot of work digging into the backstories of our characters, how they came to be who they are, and forcing them to deal with those past stories in the present tense. That happens for Doc, that happens for Blue, obviously, it happens for Mackey.... In fact, I dare say it happens on some levels for all of our characters. I mean, it happens kind of anecdotally for a lot of the characters, but for Mackey it happens in a really big, robust way that opens up the circumstances around her getting court-martialed. In Season 1, Rankin mentions that she was court martialed, that there were a bunch of guys who were pretty keen to get her out of the military and maybe they're still around. Well, Season 3 answers that question, and it does so in a way that really illuminates both Mackey and DeShawn's character. It has an element of "Mackey and DeShawn's origin story" to it.
TVLINE | Anything specific to preview for, like, Penrose?
As you'll remember, when we meet Doc at the beginning of the show, his wife is in decline. She's in a home, and Doc is dealing with the newfound reality of having a wife who's probably never going to emerge from that home. He's going through all the stages across the first couple of seasons of the show — denial and hurt and anger and all those things — and then, ultimately, in this season, that resolves itself. And the question is, what does Doc do with that? And what does his NCIS: Sydney family do to help him navigate that? Episode 6, which I can't go into too many details about, plumbs the depths of what your work family does for you when you confront real tragedy. It's an episode that's pretty profound, I think, and kind of super cool at the same time.
TVLINE | What's the most specifically Australian thing we will experience this season?
Australia has an area in the middle of the country that's a little bit like Area 51. Like, your Roswell is our [fictionally named] Erie Plains. Pretty early on in the season, NCIS: Sydney packs their bags and flies out to the Outback to investigate a U.S. Navy fighter pilot who has disappeared over our equivalent of Roswell. Everything that you can imagine of the Australian Outback comes smashing into NCIS: Sydney in one fell swoop. You'll get a lot of deep Australianness out of that!
But look, as I said to you before, we work closely with the Australian Navy, so there's a huge opportunity for NCIS: Sydney to be working in and around the Navy in meaningful ways. There's a lot of stories that will open our audience's eyes to the fact that Australia is this huge island with this Navy that protects it. The differences — and I guess in some ways a ton of similarities — between the way the American Navy works and the Australian Navy works is another opportunity to really cement the idea that we are kind of alike in so many ways and different in quite a few as well.
TVLINE | Lastly, I always have to ask this because that one time I don't, Morgan, I'm gonna turn on the TV and see you have Mark Harmon guest-starring in a whole episode. Any NCIS Easter eggs this season? Any references to characters, even if it's another Vance mention?
Yeah, there are a couple of Easter eggs for our friends. As we spoke about last time, the concept of a crossover episode is enormously appealing to NCIS fans, and our challenge obviously is that we are in a different time zone, 9,000 miles away. But our characters inhabit the same universe. Let me say that if you keep your eyes out, there are a couple of little Easter eggs that we've planted to ensure that our fans recognize that we are part of the fabric that stretches all the way across the Pacific. And I'll leave you with that! — With reporting by Matt Webb Mitovich
Are you planning to watch NCIS: Sydney Season 3? Hit the comments, and let us know!