As the penultimate episode of NCIS season 22 came to a close, McGee’s showdown with Inspector General Gabriel LaRoche finally reached a boiling point as McGee focused on attempting to expose LaRoche and his connection to the Nexus cartel once and for all. While there were some bumps along the road, McGee eventually caught LaRoche red-handed as the episode came to a close after stowing away in the car LaRoche used to steal evidence from NCIS.
With guns drawn, LaRoche shot Shaker before he could shoot McGee leading to a standoff. The rest of McGee’s team came bursting through the door and recovered an SD card from Shaker’s pocket as LaRoche told them it was time they talked.
As the NCIS season 22 finale begins, we see a flashback of LaRoche meeting with SECNAV. LaRoche mentions that he’s been trying to bring Nexus down for years, which is when SECNAV reveals to him that they had a mole in Nexus who had been outed and killed, giving them the chance to put a new mole in the game. That mole ended up being LaRoche, who took on the role of a double agent, and his first step to gaining Nexus’s trust was burning Torres’s undercover role and betraying NCIS.
Returning to the present day, we learn that LaRoche has brought the group up to speed which does not sit well with everyone, especially Vance and Parker. The pair goes to meet with SECNAV and LaRoche, confronting SECNAV about leaving them in the dark. As they chat, we learn that LaRoche had stolen the hard drive, which Knight recovered in the penultimate episode, and it seems Nexus is planning something big. The only problem is LaRoche has been burned, so they need NCIS’s help in investigating, but they’re going to need an inside man as well, or an inside woman in this instance.
In comes Carla Marino. Needless to say, Parker is not happy about the idea of working with her. LaRoche asks her to give Carla a chance as she explains that she can help serve up the whole Nexus cartel, as she wants out of the game. She tells the group that her family ran things alongside the other four crime families, but Nexus is too big. She wants full immunity and all open investigations against her closed, so she can retire in peace. Parker still isn’t sold, which is when she tells the group that Nexus is after nuclear fuel rods again.
Back at NCIS, Knight, Torres, and McGee are talking about working with Carla as Parker rolls in. They fill him in on the fact that they’ve identified a suspect from the cartel named The Butcher. They don’t know his real name or location, but it’s something. They’ve also discovered a Wordix game on the Nexus drive, which they’re eager to figure out its connection.
Between working the case, LaRoche comes to tell MeGee he’s resigning and apoligizes for lying. We then cut to Jimmy and Kasie who are working to find where Parker’s mom has ended up. Kasie is also working on looking into The Butcher and finds that Nexus was using the chat feature in Wordix to communicate. She found a coded message which seems to be the addres to an old medical clinic in Virigina.
