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After 22 years, NCIS Season 23 teases a new era, introducing a storyline that’s entirely new for the franchise. Airing fresh episodes every year since its premiere in 2003, NCIS is one of the oldest live-action scripted network TV shows, second only to Dick Wolf’s Law & Order and its SVU spinoff. Therefore, the series tends to repeat established patterns.

Season 23 features a plethora of special episodes, including the two-part premiere that dives into characters like Alden Parker (Gary Cole) and the return of Timothy McGee’s (Sean Murray) Thom E. Gemcity in Episode 6. That said, Jessica Knight (Katrina Law) is also drawing special attention this season, with her NCIS Elite position hinting at finally expanding the show’s horizons.

NCIS Season 23’s Jessica Knight Space Training Story Explained

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Toward the beginning of NCIS Season 23, Jessica Knight revealed that she had been offered a new role by Director Leon Vance (Rocky Carroll), saying that she had been pulled to train with NCIS Elite. The team was introduced in NCIS: Hawai’i, and was a highly skilled, covert task force led by Sam Hanna (LL Cool J).

While NCIS: Hawai’i’s NCIS Elite storyline ended abruptly when the Island-themed spinoff was canceled in spring 2024, NCIS Season 23 revived the story in Episode 3. Knight reveals that Vance has pulled her for “some special training for future missions with NCIS Elite.” However, Knight doesn’t detail what the training entails until “Crazy Little Thing Called Love.”

In NCIS: Hawai’i, Elite’s mission was ultimately to find a deadly bioweapon and track down its creators. That said, upon its introduction to the franchise, Elite appeared to be a highly trained yet somewhat run-of-the-mill task force. However, NCIS Season 23, Episode 7, teases that Elite is far from the Navy agency’s average task force.

Knight enters Kasie Hines’ (Diona Reasonover) lab wearing Elite’s new uniform. Hines says that Jess is “ready for blastoff,” teasing about space travel. Knight says her training actually includes extractions and CBRN, as seen in NCIS: Hawai’i. Still, she jokes, “she’s just another astronaut waiting to go to space,” teasing that the program could take the show to new heights.

NCIS Season 23 Could Mark The Franchise’s First Space Mission

If Knight is serious about being an astronaut-in-training, it would mark a significant first for the franchise, making her the first member of the Major Case Response Team (MCRT) to have ventured into space. That said, it’s not totally clear if Jess is being sarcastic or if she is hinting at the full potential of what her training is for.

Jess is known for joking around, but her uniform does look fit for an astronaut, similar to what space travelers wear during training. Even if Jess is being sarcastic, NCIS scenes are rarely surface-level and hint at the larger twists at play, meaning that Knight could be unwittingly preparing for a mission into space in NCIS Season 23.

Jess herself admits she doesn’t exactly know what her mission is, leaving open the possibility that she’s preparing to blast off. Kasie Hines knows her stuff, and if she recognizes that Knight’s jumpsuit is space crew-adjacent, then NCIS forensic scientist may be onto something. While it could all be a ruse, Hines’s intuition shouldn’t be underestimated.

Having held various positions with REACT, the elite tactical unit of NCIS that handles high-risk situations, Knight has an edge. There are also lots of covert happenings in the Navy Yard in NCIS Season 23, with Director Leon Vance behaving on edge, so he may be keeping something massive at bay, such as NCIS taking the agency to space.

What Jessica Knight’s NCIS Elite Training Means For MCRT

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While it’s excellent that Knight has been pulled for a promotion, Jess’s training with NCIS Elite has some pretty foreboding foreshadowing, considering what happened to the team in NCIS: Hawai’i Season 3’s finale. As they search for a deadly bioweapon, the entire NCIS Elite team dies from Compound X, ending the spinoff on a grim note for the task force.

Also, training with NCIS Elite could eventually leave Knight with less time for her team. While Jess told her team that her new offer didn’t mean leaving her team again, Elite could pull Jess away from MCRT, whether she intends it to or not. That would be even truer if the task force forayed into space.

Regardless of where her new promotion takes her, Knight’s training with NCIS Elite could prompt more tangible developments in her potential romance story with Agent Nick Torres (Wilmer Valderrama). If Jess gets into real danger, it could prompt her or Nick to reveal deeper feelings, which the agents have been hinting at throughout NCIS Seasons 22 and 23.