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 McGee he’s resigning and apologizes 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 that seems to be the address to an old medical clinic in Virginia.
Torres and Knight go check out the building and find a dead body who has been injected with nuclear materials, suggesting Nexus has now gotten its hands on the uranium they were seeking. Luckily, the exposure was limited, and Knight and Torres pulled through, but they find the victim worked security for a waste solutions company contracted by the military, which could give Nexus access to the uranium needed for their dirty bomb. With their backs against the wall, McGee suggests working with Carla and Parker caves.
With her deal secured, Carla fills Knight and Parker in on the head of Nexus, who she says wants to sell the uranium after moving up to the big leagues. She’s going to make some calls to see if she can figure out the buyer and invites Parker to join her for breakfast. Carla takes a list of potential buyers to Parker’s home later that night and joins Parker and his dad for dinner. After the meal, she mentions losing a son and seems to hint that Parker knew him, which definitely threw up some flags.
The next day, Parker confronts the group about gossiping about Carla coming to his house, only to find out they were working on the list she gave them. Finding the people on the list is proving difficult, but luckily, Torres has a contact at Homeland Security who is able to point them in the direction of the Messiah of Purity, a group of white supremacists who are looking to make their mark.
We then learn The Butcher has reached out to Carla to request a meeting in Kansas City. Carla thinks he’s onto her and is luring her out there to kill her. She begins to spiral, and Parker says he’s never seen her this scared, to which she points out that The Butcher is sick in the head. Knight thinks it's too much of a risk, and Carla is not sold on taking the meeting, but Parker makes it clear she needs to earn her immunity and take the meeting.
Much to her dismay, Carla caves and she and Parker head out with to the meeting with The Butcher with an NCIS and FBI agent to accompany them on the journey. As they leave, Torres get the call about the potential buyer coming in for questioning. When they meet, the man tells them he only met with Nexus to buy guns not materials for a dirty bomb, hinting that Nexus is planning on using the uranium themselves.
In an interesting development, Kasie finds the voicemail from The Butcher as well as the photo of him were fake: they’ve been chasing a guy who doesn’t exist. As they figure this out back at headquarters, the FBI agent shoots the NCIS agent and we learn this was a double-cross as Carla tells Parker there’s been a change of plans.
It turns out that the real FBI agent was killed earlier and that Carla is the true head of Nexus. So what does she want from Parker?
Carla takes Parker out to what at first seems like a random road, but ends up being where her son died in a motorcycle accident. She asks Parker why her son was all the way out there instead of with her, to which Parker points out that it was because her son ran away after finding out the truth that his mom was a mob boss. It turns out it was Parker who told her son the truth about Carla's criminal activities which put him on the path that led to his dying in the car accident that took his life.
Back at NCIS, Kasie figures out that Carla’s true plan was to kill the other heads of the mob families by luring them to her hotel room and setting off the bomb. Parker rejoins his team after Carla dropped him off at a nearby gas station, and the team is able to disarm the bomb before it goes off, seeming to get a win for the good guys. The only problem is that Carla is in the wind, but that's a problem for the next day.
As the episode ends, Parker returns home and finds his dad has been shot and has died.
As Parker takes in the scene, he notices a pair of wine glasses on the table, including one with a lipstick mark. It doesn’t take much for Parker to put two and two together to figure out that it was Carla that it was Carla who pulled the trigger and killed his dad.
So, with that, the season comes to a close. The big death teased ended up being Parker’s dad, which seems a bit like an overhyped moment given his dad wasn’t really a major character or even a major recurring character, but it’s a death that indeed will set the tone of season 23. It seems Carla will be the first major big bad of the season, with Parker and the team working to bring her to justice for her crimes.