The flagship NCIS series is off to a good start this network cycle. That is, until Season 23 revived a storyline that worsened the cancellation of its spinoff, NCIS: Hawai’i, a year after it ended. In NCIS Season 23’s two-part premiere, the flagship delivered one of its most gripping cliffhangers in years, with Alden Parker (Gary Cole) finding himself on a doomed ship called the Quentin amid the hunt for Carla Marino (Rebecca De Mornay) with his sister Harriet (Nancy Travis), holding his life in her hands.
Parker made it out alive, saying goodbye to his father, Roman (Francis X. McCarthy), at the end of Episode 2. The life-or-death story continued pushing Parker’s background to the foreground, bringing in his sister and father as he unravels the mystery of his mother’s death. Still, other stories are beginning to take form. Director Leon Vance (Rocky Carroll) pulls Nick Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) and Jessica Knight (Katrina Law) for side projects, with one of the ops stepping on the recently canceled NCIS: Hawai’i.
NCIS: Hawai’i’s Abrupt Cancellation After Season 3 Explained
Amid NCIS: Hawai’i Season 3, CBS announced the spinoff’s future, revealing it was canceled. The news was devastating for Jane Tennant (Vanessa Lachey) and her team. Amy Reisenbach cited performance, financials, and overall cohesion as reasons the series was ending when the CBS boss defended canceling shows like NCIS: Hawai’i in 2024. However, with the series generally performing well for the network, many fans believed that Hawai’i’s shutdown was to make room for upcoming shows like NCIS: Origins, which took the franchise in a different direction.
Notwithstanding Reisenbach’s comment that its cancellation kept CBS’s schedule “fresh,” NCIS: Hawai’i was the most diverse offering in the franchise. The series featured a female Asian-American Special Agent-in-Charge, with Lachey making history in several key ways for the franchise. The series also sets the franchise’s best example of including LGBTQ+ stories, with the romance between Lucy Tara (Yasmine Al-Bustami) and Kate Whistler (Tori Anderson) quickly becoming a fan-favorite.
Fans led a movement to save the show, encouraging the network to reconsider the abrupt conclusion of NCIS: Hawai’i. CBS had reversed the end of another procedural, Shemar Moore’s S.W.A.T., but Hawai’i fans didn’t win the same favor. The cancellation happened in April 2024, mere weeks before Season 3’s finale. It made matters worse that NCIS: Hawai’i Season 3 ended on a cliffhanger, bringing Jane’s deceptive mentor, Maggie Shaw (Julie White), back into the fold with a mystery she could never solve.
The cast and crew of NCIS: Hawai’i were just as devastated and heartbroken over the show’s cancellation as its fans. Lachey said that she was “gutted” upon hearing the news, as well as “blindsided.” The comments confirmed that the cancellation felt just as shocking and abrupt from the inside, with Season 3’s cliffhanger suggesting that the cast and crew had expected another chapter. In a post, Anderson noted that the decision was a “huge loss for representation,” echoing the frustration that many Hawai’i fans felt.
NCIS Season 23 Brings Back NCIS Elite From NCIS: Hawai’i
NCIS: Hawai’i introduced NCIS Elite in Season 3, a highly skilled task force led by Sam Hanna (LL Cool J). Ultimately, Elite’s mission became about Compound X, an airborne chemical weapon that could take out a room full of people in seconds. While Hanna and his team located the bioweapon with the help of Tennant and her team, Annalise Cruz (Rachel Mars) released the deadly compound to evade capture, killing the entire NCIS Elite squad in a matter of minutes.
Jane Tennant and her team never got to process the aftermath of what happened in more NCIS: Hawai’i episodes, but NCIS Season 23 has revived the storyline. In Episode 3, Vance taps Jess for NCIS Elite, with Knight telling her team that they are reviving the task force and that she has risen to the top of the list of agents to participate in training for future missions. Knight seems like a perfect fit due to her REACT Training. However, she makes no mention of Tennant’s people, missing an opportunity.
NCIS Shouldn’t Bring Back NCIS: Hawai’i’s Storyline Without Jane Tennant’s Team
Considering that Jane and her team were shut out of the franchise, and they couldn’t complete their stories, it’s in poor taste that the flagship would tell the next chapter of one of NCIS: Hawai’i’s most vital developments without them. Especially considering that the slaughter of NCIS Elite marked the final chapter of NCIS: Hawai’i with a bloodbath, it would be more redeeming for Jane and her team to get in on Elite’s second wind. However, the flagship doesn’t so much as mention them.
The flagship did clear the air about NCIS Elite when it brought back fan-favorite character Sam Hanna in NCIS Season 22, giving the Major Case Response Team (MCRT) a chance to pay their condolences. It felt more appropriate when the flagship was tapping into what happened to the Elite task force with Sam Hanna present, since he was vital to the story’s development. However, when it comes up again in Season 23, Jess doesn’t mention Hanna or anyone else, which would have been an easy way to nod to the spinoff.
NCIS should have at least brought back some of NCIS: Hawai’i’s characters to tell the story. Revisiting NCIS Elite doesn’t feel right without Jane Tennant, Jesse Boone (Noah Mills), and the rest of the team. Still, even if the series did include them, it’s sure to upset some NCIS: Hawai’i fans that the flagship would touch a story so close to the heart of the show’s cancellation. NCIS: Hawai’i never had the chance to redeem the story that defined its ending, and the flagship taking its NCIS Elite story spoils an already soured conclusion.
