It’s gonna be a long summer for FBI fans, especially those who are pretty attached to Special Agent in Charge, Isobel Castille (Alana de la Garza). She went through a lot in the Season 7 finale, “A New Day,” which forced the entire FBI NYC field office to go underground, literally, after Isobel had to fake her own death. It was the sort of plot that could have unfolded over multiple episodes, but FBI managed it in just 43 whirlwind minutes that put the whole team to the test. Even the analysts got guns!
Jubal (Jeremy Sisto) first found himself in a firefight in a secret FBI offshoot office, which is where he learned that the FBI had been infiltrated by the terrorist group ForeFront and a large attack was planned. The team quickly figured out that a recent shipment of FBI-issued cell phones had been tampered with, and just after that, phones began to explode. That included the phone of ADIC Reynolds (Ben Shenkman), who was in the process of learning about the exploding phones from Isobel, who was standing directly next to him. Reynolds was killed, Isobel appeared to be dead, and Maggie saw Deputy Assistant Director Keane, Reynolds’ second in command, reveal himself to be the traitor in charge.
Keane then kicked Jubal and his whole team out of the building, forcing them to hide out in an old subway station and concoct a plan to draw ForeFront out and take them down. Isobel, who had briefly but believably faked her death, got Keane to admit his crimes and send his agents down into a trap in the subway tunnels, where OA, Maggie, Scola and the rest were waiting with a collection of non-FBI weapons.
Isobel revealed Keane’s betrayal and had him arrested. But just as she was making her speech about how they will handle the remaining threats, she passed out. The episode ended with her fate up in the air until Season 8 premieres.
Now, FBI characters are constantly put into extreme danger that may as well kill them, but they escape relatively unscathed and ready for their next mission. Normally, you could assume the same about Isobel, but her story this season has been leading up to something happening to her. She faced some mistakes she had made, and just led her team through one of the darkest moments of their careers, all after she got secretly married and decided she wasn’t yet ready to retire. On TV, any discussion of retirement is cause for alarm, and that explosion did throw her pretty hard up against a bookcase. At the very least, the experience has to shake Isobel up a bit, right?
Sisto and De La Garza don’t yet know what’s happening next, as is pretty typical with FBI. De La Garza didn’t even know about Isobel’s husband until she read the script for that episode, and scripts haven’t yet been written for Season 8. But she can imagine how something like this will affect her character.
“I think if it’s up to Isobel, she’s a justice warrior,” she told Parade. “So she’s going to fight. She’s going to get up, and she’s going to fight. That would be my take on it. So we’ll see what they do.”
The finale was a big episode for Isobel, Jubal, and their entire team. Below, Sisto and De La Garza weigh in on the finale, the cancellation of Most Wanted and International, and what might come next for FBI.
Long before she was in that explosion, Isobel went through a lot this season, professionally and personally. How did that come to a head for you in the finale?
Alana De La Garza: What’s interesting about this season is you really get to know Isobel, probably more than you ever have. It’s revealed that she’s married. And that not only is she married, she has three children and she’s got a heart that’s much bigger [than you realized]. She’s devastated by certain things. You see a little bit of that duality that she lives by, being the boss and stringent. And then that other side that is soft and says, “I am scared or I have all these feelings. But I have to be the boss at this moment.” It’s fun to explore. You see her grow even more as the mama bear who loves her team and will fight for justice and has their back. And then the finale was so fun to play because everybody was out of their element, including Isobel. You get all these moments of [being a] superhero, and then you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I’m terrified. “
We don’t normally get to see the two of you go rogue. What was that like?
Jeremy Sisto: It was cool. I mean, the premise of the show is how the real FBI works. They have access to so many different organizations and so much technology that helps them do their jobs, and that’s the fun of the show, for sure. But — and hopefully it won’t happen too often — to see them in this situation where they’re working with actual pencils, which Jubal should probably be more comfortable with, and the computers are down and they’re really going analog. It’s a lot of fun.
De La Garza: It was so fun to have that dynamic be so different, to have everybody out of their element, but we’re still a team and a family fighting for justice. It was fun to work in the shadows, and it’s dirty and creepy, and how are we going to get information to each other? It was neat to see how they were going to pull that off.
Do you think this story will have an effect next season, now that the whole team has seen how easily the FBI could be infiltrated?
Sisto: Yeah, to know that some people that were vetted, and they vet FBI agents a lot. To think that multiple of those people have turned out to be anti-government is probably going to be handled in the infrastructure. They vet pretty hard, they’re going to vet even harder after this. So listen, we’re going to reignite a trust in the organization, into the FBI, all the agents and analysts. There’s going to be something to address that from the top [down]. I’m not sure if Isobel makes it through this crisis. But I’m sure she and the ADIC, or whoever’s at the top, will figure out some way to figure out something. See how I did that?
What do you hope happens next season, especially since now they have to top runaway trains and double agents?
De La Garza: I don’t know how they do that. They’re pretty brilliant in the way they write. Mike Weiss and the entire team just [do] it right. And it’s very exciting for us. Because like I said, we don’t know a whole lot. Sometimes we’ll get little tidbits about [things that] might be coming or whatever, but for the most part, we’re opening scripts and reading them, and we’re as surprised as you are. We’ve only read them for about a month before you.
Sisto: Obviously, times are changing. AI, technology, drones. We’ve covered some of that stuff this year, some threats that are evolving. That’s really the interesting part. How this office is going to change, how it has to change in order to keep up with the possible bad guys and the technology there. I’m always interested in the kind of research they’ve done in terms of that and how to bring that to an exciting story. What I know will be there [are] these exciting stories, exciting twists. There’s a lot of different possible places that a threat can come from, sometimes less realistic than others. Sometimes it’s more of a play on an idea, and sometimes it’s things you’ve seen in the news. It’s like using all that, all of those colors at your disposal for a writer to paint a season that is unpredictable. Sometimes there are episodes that are less serious, sometimes there are ideas that you really don’t want to think about for too long, and they all take into consideration the real-life potential of this agency.
Do you ever read news articles and worry or hope it will be a story on the show?
Sisto: Yeah. I mean, we’ve gone in and out of using real-life things. We’re not Law & Order [with] a lot of “ripped from the headlines.” They’ve done it more this season than I was thinking they would, partially because it’s tricky. It’s a very divisive time and Dick Wolf is very intent on this being entertainment for everyone. This covers things that people have strong political opinions about, but that’s not what this show is. The show is kind of showing a version of reality and really giving people something that they can watch and enjoy and decompress. It’s entertainment.
You two crossed over onto Most Wanted and International more than most, so how are you feeling watching them end?
De La Garza: I think it’s always a bummer when one of your sisters goes away. They’re all great people, and you want to see good actors do good work and be a part of it. It was fun to be able to hop over and give them a hug and play a little with the team. So yeah, I mean, it’s definitely disappointing.
Sisto: For sure. I had a couple of great trips with my kids over to Rome and Budapest, and so it’s very sad that that’s no longer a possibility. They were great shows, so it’s a heartbreak that we had this universe that really suddenly got truncated. I don’t know how these decisions are made. But yeah, it’s a bummer.
