The NCIS fall finale aired on Monday night. The new episode was expected, but some NCIS fans may have been shocked to learn that it was the final new episode that will air in Fall 2021.
On the previous episode of NCIS, Torres got a new (used) car, Parker spoke about his childhood, Palmer and Knight bonded over their losses, and Kasie thought about getting a gun for self-defense.
That episode was pretty self-contained, with the team succeeding at figuring out how a man had been killed by a rare weapon recently purchased at a gun expo.
To summarize the NCIS fall finale that just aired, a financial advisor was found dead (shot) at a naval station. It led NCIS down a bizarre road of interviewing the victim’s three-dimensional hologram (of herself) that she had created before her death.
NCIS Season 19, Episode 9 recap
The episode started at a Naval station where two petty officers came across the body of Sandra Holdren (played by Stepfanie Kramer). She had been outside of the base to watch her grandson play in a soccer game, but someone had snuck up on her and shot her with a silencer.
When Torres and Knight went to her house to notify the next of kin, they met her assistant, who then introduced them to a hologram version of Sandra Holdren. The hologram was able to answer many of their questions and actually aid with the investigation. As for why it even existed, Sandra was dying, and she wanted to leave something behind to bridge the gap with her estranged daughter.
When Ruby Holdren (the daughter of Sandra, played by Holly Curran) was brought in, she wasn’t even sad that her mother had been killed. It turned out that she had been mad at her mom for a long time and part of it stemmed from Sandra stealing millions from her clients through her finance work. According to Ruby, she got off without going to jail, leaving behind a lot of victims that would have motives.
Wrapping up the NCIS Season 19 fall finale
There were a lot of suspects in this case, but it turned out that it was Sandra’s lawyer who had murdered her. When he confessed, he admitted to being the one who stole the money from Sandra’s clients, and then he pinned it on her son Ben.
Sandra took the blame because she thought Ben was behind it, but she continued investigating it over the years after Ben killed himself. The lawyer said that she was getting too close to the truth. As for that truth, Ruby forgave her mom when she learned the real story behind it all.
Sandra’s hologram actually ended up being a key to the investigation, as it provided a lot of the information that led to the NCIS team being suspicious of the lawyer. Knight had been the one speaking to the hologram for most of the episode, and it became personal for her due to her estrangement from her own mother. Of course, the episode ended with Knight contacting her mom to end that silence.
NCIS airs Mondays at 9/8c on CBS.