WARNING: The following contains spoilers for NCIS Season 18, Episode 15, “Blown Away,” which aired May 18 on CBS.
The penultimate episode of Season 18 of NCIS opens on a hostage situation as a REACT (Regional Enforcement Action Capabilities Training) team tries to defuse the situation. A man, Toby, has taken his girlfriend as a hostage when the team came to serve a high-risk warrant against him, so Special Agent Jessica Knight is inside of the home trying to talk the suspect down. When she sees prenatal medication in a shopping bag, she realizes that the girlfriend is pregnant and uses that information to make Toby let her go. However, just as the girlfriend makes it to safety outside of the house, a bomb goes off inside.
When the investigative team arrives on the scene, they recover three of five bodies, but Jimmy says there is no chance of the other two surviving. Supervisory Special Agent Dalton, the REACT team’s commander, has no information of them, so McGee, Bishop and Torres head inside. Based on blast patterns, they are able to determine that there was a single explosive device, but then they hear a noise -- S.O.S. in morse code. It turns out to be Special Agent Knight, who miraculously survived and is caught under debris.
Back at NCIS, the team looks into Toby. He is Petty Officer Second Class Toby Withers and was wanted for stealing weapons from a naval station. On his rooftop, smoke-approved hideout, Special Agent Dalton informs them that Toby wanted the weapons for a white supremacist group, even bragging to his bunkmates about his crimes. That notwithstanding, the team believes that there is something more going on. Bishop then meets with Jimmy and Kasie to get an update on the autopsy. There, she sees that pieces of the bomb melted into Toby’s body. Kasie explains that that is significant because it means he was not a suicide bomber and that the parts were made from a 3-D printer, meaning they cannot be tracked.
Now that they are allowing visitors, Bishop and Torres go to see Special Agent Knight at the hospital, who is doing remarkably well, having only received a “severe concussion.” In fact, they find her trying to sneak out. However, a nurse catches her, and she has to stay put. When Bishop and Torres ask her some questions, Knight makes it clear that there was no way that Toby could have set off the bomb, meaning their lead suspect might actually have been a target.
With Gibbs still suspended, the subplot of the episode follows him and investigative journalist Marcie Warren. After writing the story that got Gibbs in trouble, they have since made up and become, in a way, friends. Marcie asked Gibbs to look at a news story about the murder of an old friend because she is convinced that the police arrested the wrong person. Gibbs agrees with her hypothesis, so the two of them begin to investigate. He gets information from a retired friend at the NPD and finds out that the victim was bound with red duct tape and killed with a hammer. Notably, though, that information was never released to the press, specifically to prevent copycat killings. This sparks Marcie’s memory about another story she wrote with similar circumstances, and Gibbs finds something similar with a third victim. Three murders in three states with the same M.O. is too big of a coincidence, and it means they're looking at the work of a serial killer.
Meanwhile, the team mulls over the idea that Toby might have been a target. Their theory is that the anonymous tip that led the REACT team to the house was sent by the person in charge. Toby had outlived his usefulness after stealing the weapons, and the brains of the operation wanted him dead. So, he called in NCIS, hoping that they would take out Toby in a firefight, which would leave him with all of the cash he made from selling the weapons.
As they are working on this theory, however, Special Agent Knight shows up in the bullpen. She swears to have been released from the hospital, but the team is not convinced. After a back-and-forth debate with McGee, they agree that she has 48 hours to help investigate before they report her to Director Vance. With that agreed upon, she and McGee go down to Kasie’s lab and find out that the REACT team was part of a pilot program that was testing new, advanced body armor. Amongst other features, the armor can detect radio frequencies, which will allow them to figure out who sent the signal to detonate the bomb. Kasie says that the armor comes from a company called Kessler Gear Systems, but she cannot figure out the RFIO code alone because the information is encoded in propriety software.
The CEO of Kessler Gear Systems actually comes over personally to help with the investigation. He has just received a government contract for his body armor, and part of the agreement is assisting with tech support for NCIS. That said, he is happy to help and easily finds the phone that detonated the bomb. Unfortunately, when Torres and King go to investigate, they find its owner is already dead. There are bombing supplies in his closet, but the most chilling thing they find are photographs of the REACT team members. Toby must have simply been collateral because it seems like the team was the real target for the bomber. Shortly thereafter, the team uncovers a wire transfer for $20,000. It will take some time to track, but it’s clear that they uncovered the bomber, not the brains.
At this point, Jimmy finds Special Agent Knight in autopsy taking time with the bodies of her fallen teammates. She tells him that she had needed a minute and left her team in a different room with Toby before the bomb went off. The little bit of extra distance is why she was not killed, and she has survivor’s guilt. As someone with experience on the subject, Jimmy tells her to focus on what her team would think about her surviving, which helps her a little. Jimmy also tells her that Special Agent Madden, one of her team members, was sick with advanced lung disease and had less than a year to live. Clearly, he had been making the best of his time left.
Things get more complicated, though, when Special Agent Madden seems to be involved. They find multiple crates of the body armor at this house worth roughly a quarter of a million dollars. Kasie also finds surveillance of him stealing the crates from the NCIS armory at a time his key card designated him in another area of the building. While Special Agent Knight is less than thrilled with the news, she proceeds to investigate her teammate. But at the same time, Jimmy appears with new, vital information. Special Agent Madden was not a dirty cop; the body armor was killing him, and he was building a case against Kessler Gear Systems. His asthma had been blown out of proportion by the PBDE in the armor, which was used as a flame retardant until it was deemed toxic.
With this new information, they call Mr. Kessler back to NCIS and confront him about the illegal materials in his body armor and the wire transfer, liking him to the hired bomber. He admits to everything, saying that he had fixed the issue in the new line for his government contract. However, he goes on to reveal that Special Special Agent Dalton, the REACT team commander, extorted him. Dalton threatened that he would snitch about the original, illegal materials if Kessler didn’t cut him in. It was Dalton’s idea to hire the bomber because, if Special Agent Madden leaked the information, he wouldn't get paid.
When Special Agent Knight confronts him on top of the NCIS roof, Dalton explains that he only wanted to take out Madden, not the whole team. The bomb was supposed to go off later when Madden was doing a final sweep of the building, but the bomber “jumped the gun.” Regardless, Knight is still appalled at Dalton's lack of remorse. Rather than going with her, though, he tries to jump off of the roof. Fortunately, Knight tricks him long enough to pull Dalton back and take him into custody. Later, at the funeral for the REACT team members, Knight tells McGee that she feels “like an orphan." McGee responds by telling her, “That’s the thing with families. Sometimes they grow,” adding fuel to the rumor that Knight may join the NCIS team full-time.
NCIS stars Mark Harmon, Sean Murray, Emily Wickersham, Wilmer Valderrama, Brian Dietzen, Diona Reasonover, Rocky Carroll, David McCallum. The season finale will air next Tuesday, May 25, at 8 p.m. on CBS.