{"id":3945,"date":"2025-12-06T19:13:55","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T19:13:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/?p=3945"},"modified":"2025-12-06T19:13:55","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T19:13:55","slug":"ncis-season-23-introduces-a-historic-franchise-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/?p=3945","title":{"rendered":"NCIS Season 23 Introduces a Historic Franchise First"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The following contains spoilers for NCIS Season 23, Episode 7, \u201cGod Only Knows,\u201d which premiered on Tuesday, December 2, on CBS.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

After 22 years,\u00a0NCIS<\/em>\u00a0Season 23 teases a new era, introducing a storyline that\u2019s entirely new for the franchise. Airing fresh episodes every year since its premiere in 2003,\u00a0NCIS<\/em>\u00a0is one of the oldest live-action scripted network TV shows, second only to Dick Wolf\u2019s\u00a0Law & Order<\/em>\u00a0and its\u00a0SVU<\/em>\u00a0spinoff. Therefore, the series tends to repeat established patterns.<\/p>\n

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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\u2019s (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\u2019s horizons.<\/p>\n

NCIS Season 23\u2019s Jessica Knight Space Training Story Explained<\/h2>\n
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\"Jessica<\/picture>Image via CBS<\/small><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Toward the\u00a0beginning of\u00a0NCIS<\/em>\u00a0Season 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\u00a0NCIS: Hawai\u2019i,<\/em>\u00a0and was a highly skilled, covert task force led by Sam Hanna (LL Cool J).<\/p>\n

While\u00a0NCIS: Hawai\u2019i<\/em>\u2019s NCIS Elite storyline\u00a0ended abruptly when the Island-themed spinoff was canceled in spring 2024,\u00a0NCIS<\/em> Season 23 revived the story in Episode 3. Knight reveals that Vance has pulled her for \u201csome special training for future missions with NCIS Elite.\u201d However, Knight doesn\u2019t detail what the training entails until \u201cCrazy Little Thing Called Love.\u201d<\/p>\n

In NCIS: Hawai\u2019i, Elite\u2019s 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,\u00a0NCIS<\/em>\u00a0Season 23, Episode 7, teases that Elite is far from the Navy agency\u2019s average task force.<\/p>\n

Knight enters\u00a0Kasie Hines\u2019 (Diona Reasonover)\u00a0lab wearing Elite\u2019s new uniform. Hines says that Jess is \u201cready for blastoff,\u201d teasing about space travel. Knight says her training actually includes extractions and CBRN, as seen in\u00a0NCIS: Hawai\u2019i.<\/em>\u00a0Still, she jokes, \u201cshe\u2019s just another astronaut waiting to go to space,\u201d teasing that the program could take the show to new heights.<\/p>\n

NCIS Season 23 Could Mark The Franchise\u2019s First Space Mission<\/h2>\n
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\"Leon<\/picture><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u2019s not totally clear if Jess is being sarcastic or if she is hinting at the full potential of what her training is for.<\/p>\n

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,\u00a0NCIS<\/em>\u00a0scenes are rarely surface-level and hint at the larger twists at play, meaning that Knight could be unwittingly preparing for a mission into space\u00a0in\u00a0NCIS<\/em> Season 23.<\/p>\n

Jess herself admits she doesn\u2019t exactly know what her mission is, leaving open the possibility that she\u2019s preparing to blast off. Kasie Hines knows her stuff, and if she recognizes that Knight\u2019s jumpsuit is space crew-adjacent, then\u00a0NCIS forensic scientist may be onto something. While it could all be a ruse, Hines\u2019s intuition shouldn\u2019t be underestimated.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0NCIS<\/em>\u00a0Season 23, with\u00a0Director Leon Vance\u00a0behaving on edge, so he may be keeping something massive at bay, such as NCIS taking the agency to space.<\/p>\n

What Jessica Knight\u2019s NCIS Elite Training Means For MCRT<\/h2>\n
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\"NCIS<\/picture>Image via CBS<\/small><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

While it\u2019s excellent that Knight has been pulled for a promotion, Jess\u2019s training with NCIS Elite has some pretty foreboding foreshadowing, considering what happened to the team in\u00a0NCIS: Hawai\u2019i<\/em>\u00a0Season 3\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Regardless of where her new promotion takes her, Knight\u2019s training with NCIS Elite could prompt more tangible developments in her potential\u00a0romance 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\u00a0NCIS<\/em>\u00a0Seasons 22 and 23.<\/p>\n

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The following contains spoilers for NCIS Season 23, Episode 7, \u201cGod Only Knows,\u201d which premiered on Tuesday, December 2, on CBS. After 22 years,\u00a0NCIS\u00a0Season 23 teases a… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3945"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3947,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3945\/revisions\/3947"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncisnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}