Alden Parker (Gary Cole) won’t be the only one grieving after that shocking death in the NCIS Season 22 finale.
Nancy Travis will be guest starring as Parker’s sister, Navy Vice Admiral Harriet Parker, with her introduction coming in the Season 23 premiere, TVLine reports. Theirs won’t be an easy dynamic. But how will they handle their grief?
Parker came face-to-face with his longtime nemesis, mob boss Carla (Rebecca De Mornay), at the end of Season 22, only for her to shockingly not kill him when she could. Instead, she hit him where it really hurt: He arrived home at the end of the finale to find his father (Francis X. McCarthy) dead. It was clear who was responsible, given that Carla blamed him for her son’s death, since he died in a car accident after Parker informed him of his mother’s illegal activities.
Killing off his father was all about throwing Parker off balance, executive producer Steven D. Binder told TV Insider last May after the finale. “Whereas the previous bullpen dynamic was you worked around the clock and never stopped and never had a life, he’s a more balanced individual. Gary’s a very balanced guy himself when you see him, and you see that bleed over into the character, and we thought it would be very interesting to take that character and push him into a place where he’s never been before,” the EP explained. That change was something they’d wanted to see all along with the character.
“What is it going to take to send this guy, turn this guy into a man on fire?” Binder continued. Then they realized that was where Carla could come in: “You’ve got this arch nemesis of Parker’s who blames him for — losing a dad’s bad, but losing a child’s considerably worse, and blames Parker for this and is vindictive and evil enough that she doesn’t want to just kill him and end that she wants to torture him and this is the person she’s chosen to torture him with, or who would be the person to torture him with? And it’s really just his dad at this point.”
What are you hoping to see between the Parker siblings in Season 23? Let us know in the comments section below.
NCIS, Season 23 Premiere, Tuesday, October 14, 8/7c, CBS
