CBS‘ very recently cancelled NCIS: Hawai’i this Monday night served up Part 1 of its Season 3 — and now series — finale. How high are the stakes heading into next week’s very final episode? (And who didn’t make it out of Part 1 alive?)
The episode “Spill the Tea” opened with Jesse, Kai and a grabbed-during-her-morning jog Lucy rudely rounded up and loaded into a van by NCIS Elite (sorry, ELITE, since it’s an acronym) team members Rosemary and Thyme. They were delivered to ELITE’s top-secret holding center, where Jane and her team, Dr. Chase included, were needed to work a crime scene — the crime being Volkov aka The Chemist’s murder, by poisoned tea.
We learned that Special Agent Swift had tea with Volkov every day; in fact, the fed prepared and served the tea himself, so there were no clues there. Dr. Chase eventually deduced that Volkov had a heavily compromised immune system (due to his years of work with noxious chemicals), and he had been slowly poisoned by regular servings of tea that contained an herbal supplement that triggered a deadly allergic reaction.
Meanwhile, Kai and Lucy had gone looking for the procurements guy who outfitted the ELITE hub, and instead found who they come to realize is a killer for a Bratva faction. That led the “NCIS Regular” and NCIS ELITE teams to a motel where other Russkies were holed up. A firefight ensued, Bratva goons died, and the agents found a frightened young woman being held prisoner: Dr. Annalise Cruz, Volkov’s assistant.
Swift went in hard when grilling Cruz, until Jane reined him in. A softer touch by Dr. Chase led Cruz to share details on Volkov’s ominous-sounding “Compound X”: it’s a bioweapon that is odorless and tasteless and airborne, makes your body destroy itself, and can kill thousands in minutes. Thing is, NCIS ELITE has yet to crack where Volkov’s fourth and final lab is located.
Sam and the ELITE team, along with Jane, Jesse, Dr. Chase and Dr. Cruz, hopped a PJ to Belgrade, after Swift deduced that is where the lab is. When Jesse questioned how they can operate where they have no jurisdiction, Sam explained that ELITE’s whole bag is “going places they’re not welcome and solving problems before anyone knows they’re there.” (Jesse also learned that ELITE stands for “Elevated Logics Intelligence and Tactics”; as Rosemary explained, “the last E is silent.”)
After Jane (via a colorful local asset named Milos aka the Serbian version of NCIS: LA‘s Nina Barnes) got the teams outfitted with firepower, she (with Jesse as backup) paid a visit to Bratva boss Lev Fedorov, charming him with her brazen approach in a public eatery. After trading vodka shots for intel bits, Jane fed the lab’s location to Sam and the ELITE team, who raced to storm it.But just as Sam & Co. breached the lab, and Dr. Cruz found/packed up the Compound X canisters, Fedorov treated Jane to an extra, curious bit of intel: Dr. Cruz hadn’t been abducted by Bratva and brought to Hawai’i; she had already been there, for weeks. But before Jane could get word to Sam that Cruz cannot be trusted, the not-at-all-good doctor unleashed one canister of Compound X on Rosemary, Thyme and New Jesse, who were confined in an airlock, while a helpless Sam watched through a window from outside the door….
