It turns out he\u2019s stopped by the Navy Yard at the perfect time; Kasie\u2019s (Diona Reasonover<\/a>) upgrading the system in MTAC with a skeleton crew when someone is murdered, and Sam joins Parker (Gary Cole<\/a>) and Palmer (Brian Dietzen<\/a>) in getting to the bottom of it. His presence also allows for an organic way to continue to talk about the major loss of Vance (Rocky Carroll<\/a>), who was killed in the line of duty during the 500th episode<\/a>. Warning: Spoilers for\u00a0NCIS Season 23 Episode 17 ahead!<\/p>\n You gotta love that Sam\u2019s visit continues his and Palmer\u2019s friendship. The ME and Parker find Sam on the couch in Ducky\u2019s; he needed somewhere to take a nap during a long layover on his way to visit a friend in Dubai. Palmer comments on the lack of a call, at first claiming his daughter will be disappointed, but it\u2019s clear he\u2019s also a bit hurt about the lack of a text. Sam also backs Palmer when the latter wants to help interrogate the tech trolls, telling Parker, \u201cYou should\u2019ve seen him in Hawai\u2019i<\/a> in that dungeon they had us in. Man\u2019s got skills.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s also to Sam that Palmer confides that when he can\u2019t sleep, he runs steps at the Navy Yard, and he\u2019s training, including wearing a 30-lb. weight vest, to climb Kilimanjaro. \u201cGood for you, Jimmy,\u201d Sam tells him. \u201cI love the idea.\u201d He also pushes\/forces Palmer into telling the others (Parker\u2019s supportive) and to climb up the elevator shaft when they get stuck between floors since Sam can\u2019t fit through the hatch.<\/p>\n But when one of the issues plaguing the MTAC upgrade requires a new cooling fan, well, it\u2019s a good thing that there\u2019s an \u201cold MTAC\u201d available. \u201cVance once showed me these old NIS MTAC parts in the evidence locker, way in the back,\u201d Parker reveals.<\/p>\n While he and Sam collect what they need, Sam remarks that he hasn\u2019t seen everyone since Vance\u2019s funeral and asks how they\u2019re all doing. (We do wonder now who else was at Vance\u2019s funeral from across the\u00a0NCIS franchise\u2026)\u00a0\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d Parker admits. \u201cDoesn\u2019t seem real, a lot of us are still in denial.\u201d Sam is, too, adding, \u201cTell you what, we replace old MTAC with new MTAC, but people, like Vance\u2026\u201d Parker agrees, \u201cNo replacing that.\u201d<\/p>\n Sam then admits that he\u2019s now \u201cthinking about where I\u2019m headed, been waiting to make a move for a while, haven\u2019t been able to settle on a direction quite yet\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m done waiting,\u201d clearly setting up NCIS: New York. It\u2019s also fitting, given that Sam talked to Vance about his future during LL Cool J\u2019s Season 22 appearance<\/a>, and the director had assured him he\u2019d always have a place at NCIS.<\/p>\n Robert Voets\/CBS<\/p>\n As for the case, it ends up being pretty straightforward. The Department of Defense Deputy Chief of Cybersecurity (Noah Bean<\/a>) warns Kasie that heads will roll if the MTAC upgrade doesn\u2019t go perfectly. So, of course, it doesn\u2019t. Long story short, janitor Tommy (Geoffrey Arend<\/a>) is forced to sabotage the upgrade \u2014 his family, and a plumber who\u2019s in the wrong place at the wrong time, is taken hostage \u2014 and patch into the reboot. The assumption is whoever\u2019s responsible wanted to get into case files and employee information, but, in the episode\u2019s final moments, Kasie reveals that a folder named Edna is empty. But what is Edna? All Kasie says is, \u201cI think I\u2019m the reason why Daryl\u2019s dead.\u201d Cue the rare \u201cTo Be Continued\u2026\u201d on NCIS.<\/p>\n (Side note: There has to be more going on with Noah Bean\u2019s character; there\u2019s no way he was just cast for that one scene.)<\/p>\n What did you think of LL Cool J\u2019s return to\u00a0NCIS? Let us know in the comments section below.<\/p>\n NCIS, Tuesdays, 8\/7c, CBS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What To Know LL Cool J returns as Sam Hanna in NCIS Season 23, setting up his lead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[9,11,10],"class_list":{"0":"post-205781","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-new-york-headlines","10":"tag-new-york-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Diona](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ncis-2317-kasie-855x570.jpg\")
<\/p>\n