NCIS: Origins when the season 3 premiere episode arrived this week, including who took Randy and what was next for Lala and Gibbs. Plus, how was a familiar face connected to what happened to everyone’s favorite happy-go-lucky agent?
Gibbs and Lala were about to get intimate when Lala got a call from Franks. Via voicemail, they hear that they have a victim and that Franks cannot get ahold of anyone else on the team, so he is hoping Lala is still there.
The newly-minted NCIS team must find out what happened to Randy
As they head out to the crime scene to investigate the death of Sergeant Zachary Crudo, Mary Jo is cleaning up from the party celebrating the future of the newly-minted NCIS. However, things get dire when Woody rushes in to inform her that Randy’s car was still in the parking lot, left open with his pager on the ground.
When the team finds out Randy is missing, they are all distraught and immediately get to work trying to figure out what happened. Lala is overcome with guilt when she realizes the van she thought was following her was actually targeting Randy. But Gibbs assures her it wasn’t her fault.
They get gas station footage of the van and Gibbs notices that someone, likely Randy, is using morse code to get a message out. He wants them to know the Russians are involved. After learning that JJ, in reality Vera, flipped a Russian to use as an informant, they go to investigate. Anyone who remembers Blockbuster will be hit with nostalgia when they see where exactly he works.
Their informant recognizes the man as Maxim, who is extremely dangerous, but he knows where they can find him. Just as they discover him, the man sets the area around a camper on fire. As Franks make the arrest, Lala and Gibbs break in just in time to rescue Randy, who is beat up but alive.
The men who took him were looking for the password to his computer, which is where he had been digitizing the NCIS files. They had discovered the Kremlin were looking to get ahold of Navy secrets so they figured this is what they were after. But they still had to find out who hired them.
As this was all happening, they still had to investigate Crudo’s death and they discover that he had apparently been a driver for former Regional Director Ronald Barrett. He was the misogynistic former interim director who called Mary Jo names like “sugar” and constantly stared at her when she walked away.
He is brought in for questioning, but claims he hadn’t talked to Crudo in months. However, after further investigation, they find out that Crudo had been making phone calls at a phone booth just blocks from where Barrett lived.
Randy gets to interrogate his abductor, but realizes a crucial mistake from Gail led them to find his password after all. She had put a note of the password in his wallet instead of hiding it somewhere like a safe. He’s horrified to realize that not only is his password not working, but the computer at his station is not even his. He figures this out due to a lack of scuff marks from where Franks had lost his temper and broke the computer.
They deduce Crudo must have used the NCIS party to break in and steal the computer, but he was a means to an end and was killed. Ronald Barrett was behind the entire plot and Gibbs figured this out when he realized that some residual ash found near Crudo’s body matched a cigar that Barrett left at NCIS after his interview.
With Randy safe and sound, the big question remaining is what would happen with Lala and Gibbs. It did look like they were about to start a relationship, however when Gibbs read Lala’s goodbye letter, he realized he had hurt her more than she let on. Even though they wanted each other, Lala needed time to figure herself out, but he agreed to wait.
Based on the narration from future Gibbs, we wonder if something occurred that caused them not to make things work. But after present day Gibbs is shot in front of his cabin, he uses a breathing technique that makes it difficult to find a pulse so he can play dead. One of the shooters says, “One down, one to go,” meaning someone Gibbs cares about is in danger. He manages to fix up his wound as his narration revealed that his story with Lala may not be over after all.
So whatever brings Gibbs back to LA, it likely has something to do with the the case they had been involved in with the premiere. But who exactly is hunting him and is the second person Lala or another person? We’re looking forward to solving this mystery, and the many more that are no doubt going to come into play as season 3 plays out.
NCIS: Origins airs Tuesday nights on CBS at 10/9c.
Add us as a preferred source on Google