Nancy Travis’ Confirmed NCIS Season 23 Role Can Finally Kill Off Season 22’s Most Boring Storyline

Long-time sitcom mainstay Nancy Travis is joining NCIS at a crucial point in her character’s timeline, and her new role could put one of the series’ most exhausting mysteries to bed within a couple of episodes. If so, it will mean that NCIS’ cast of characters can return focus to storylines that actually answer as many questions as they raise

Nancy Travis’ Harriet Parker Can Help Alden Finish Off NCIS Season 22’s Lily Plotline

©Netflix / Courtesy MovieStillsDB

Alden mentions having siblings in multiple episodes, but Nancy Travis’ Harriet Parker was first referenced directly in NCIS season 20’s “Unusual Suspects,” when Roman mentions Alden’s sister making admiral in the Navy not long after moving into Alden’s home. This means that, by unlucky coincidence, Roman first referenced Harriet in the same place where his death would later justify her appearance.

CBS announced that Nancy Travis’ NCIS role will debut in season 23’s two-part premiere, the timing of which suggests that Harriet Parker is likely reconnecting with Alden directly in response to Roman’s murder. But while this two-parter will almost certainly relate to Carla Marino’s storyline, Harriet can also help Roman make headway in his puzzling and overly drawn-out Lily investigation.

The NCIS season 23 premiere is confirmed to explore Alden and Harriet’s family history. Their long-running competitive streak should give Travis a great opportunity to flex the comedic skills she’s polished in series like Becker and Last Man Standing, but Parker rehashing memories with his sister could also lead to uncovering fragments about Lily that he’s repressed since his childhood.

Roman wasn’t much help when it came to filling in the gaps in Alden’s memory, but Harriet’s introduction adds a new perspective to the conversation. New information from Harriet could be enough to finally explain why Parker’s suddenly haunted by Lily’s memory, allowing NCIS to close out that mystery and move ahead with whatever else the storyline’s been setting up.

NCIS Season 23 Prolonging Lily’s Storyline Was A Bad Idea From The Start

©CBS / courtesy MovieStillsDB

Alden’s first haunting visions of Lily teased emotional depth and ghostly intrigue, prompting several theories about why Lily haunts Parker in NCIS. The series has used ghostly visions to complement character-driven emotional storylines before, such as in Gibbs’ vision of an alternate reality in which his family is alive, but the Lily mystery hasn’t been quite as short-lived or effective.

Parker requesting help from Roman and Jimmy didn’t help much. Rather than their discoveries launching the storyline into rising action, the series has done little more than drip-feed the audience vague clues with relatively little payoff. We finally know how Lily died in NCIS, but not why she’s presently relevant nor what Jimmy’s learned about the death of Parker’s mother.

The wait for answers would prove far less frustrating if Lily played into the show’s broader plotlines, but the biggest theories about Lily’s connection to NCIS’ Carla Marino have been debunked. It’s harder to stay invested in a ghost when there’s a compelling villain plot still unfolding simultaneously, especially when Carla just reached peak intensity as a legitimately deadly threat.

It’s not just a concern over how well Lily factors into the overall plot. Even if Lily does connect to a bigger storyline, resolving her subplot conclusively allows the larger story to move on or at least incorporate the answers to the Lily mystery into the broader narrative. Either choice would provide more story momentum than Lily has thus far.

Why Nancy Travis’ Character Is The Best Choice To Cap Off Alden’s Ghost Story

©CBS / Courtesy MovieStillsDB

Casting Travis was a smart move, but Harriet’s introduction overall could prove narratively strategic if done right. Whatever Jimmy found when looking into the death of Parker’s mother, Harriet’s perspective and potentially less fractured memory can help put all findings about Lily and Parker’s mother into context, something Alden hasn’t been able to do on his own until this point.

Harriet’s appearance makes emotional sense for Parker, but only if it meaningfully impacts Alden’s story. With the promising story of Parker and Carla’s future NCIS relationship effectively blown to pieces in favor of the show’s next season-long villain arc, the mystery of what happened to Lily is the easiest storyline to wrap quickly that affects both Alden and his sister.

For NCIS season 23 to bring in a figure so pivotal to Parker’s backstory and not have her address the spectral elephant in the room would feel like a missed opportunity. Lily’s storyline can’t lead to anything bigger while the initial mystery remains only half-explored, but Harriet can swoop in with major reveals that kick the real plotline into gear.

Learning why Parker’s been having these visions relating back to repressed memories could lead to a much bigger story overall, but the specific mystery of Lily’s ghost has been stretched about as far as NCIS can justify. If Nancy Travis’ appearance results in nothing more than Harriet Parker drawing back that curtain, she’ll have given the season a strong start.

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