While the biggest moment from the NCIS Season 21 finale was Katrina Law’s Jessica Knight leaving the agency to become the new REACT instructor at Camp Pendleton, we can’t forget about the mysteries left behind concerning Gary Cole’s Alden Parker. In addition to telling Knight in “Reef Madness” that he learned about ships from his father, yet strangely wouldn’t tell her anything about his mother, Parker also hallucinated seeing a little girl named Lily from when he was a child. Not only do we now have confirmation that this plot point will be explored further when NCIS Season 22 starts airing on the 2024 TV schedule, the CBS series’ showrunner has revealed an unexpected detail about this mystery that’s left me more puzzled.
Season 22 is still largely shrouded in mystery, although Wilmer Valderrama, who plays Nick Torres, has teased that the next batch of episodes will be “more personal, more soul-shattering.” However, when TVLine asked co-showrunner Steven D. Binder if the next season of NCIS will shed any more light on Lilly and Parker’s mother, he shared this juicy tidbit of information:
I will say this… It’s not entirely clear to him who this girl [seen in flashback/hallucination] was. There’s something in his past that even he’s not aware of that’s bubbling to the surface.
This is interesting. When I first watched “Reef Madness”, I just assumed that Lily was some childhood friend of Parker’s, and perhaps something happened to her that’s stuck with him after all these decades. That could still be true, but now thanks to Steven D. Binder, we know that Parker isn’t even aware of who she is. Could this just be a repressed memory, or is Lily perhaps not even real and being used as a substitute for someone else? After all, Parker saw her while he was dealing with his legs being pinned by a massive pipe, and the mind is known to do strange things when one is in a lot of pain.
Since there’s another two months to go until NCIS Season 22 starts airing, we’ll just have to wrack our brains about how Lily factors into Alden Parker’s past. That topic was previously been explored when we learned he spent time in juvenile detention and was married to Vivian Kochak until 2005. Gary Cole has been part of NCIS’ main cast since early Season 19, when he took over as Supervisory Agent from the departing Leroy Jethro Gibbs.
NCIS Season 22 will begin airing Monday, October 14, the same day that the prequel NCIS: Origins will debut on CBS. Revisit all the shows in the NCIS franchise with a Paramount+ subscription, which you’ll also need if you’re interested in watching the upcoming spinoff NCIS: Tony & Ziva, as that will be a streaming-exclusive series.