Ever since Wilmer Valderrama joined NCIS, his character Special Agent Nick Torres had trouble adapting to being a team player. He was just starting to really get settled in when team leader Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) left NCIS, and Nick went into a bit of a spiral, because Gibbs, who had been like a father figure to him, was what had kept him grounded.
Now, in the season 20 finale, it looks as if Nick might have gone off the reservation again when we see photos of him in an orange jumpsuit in prison. But that isn’t where Nick really goes rogue. It’s in the final scene of the episode, which begins with Torres going undercover as Manny Delgado, who is serving 10 years for armed robbery, in order to continue the investigation into the Russian spy ring in the “Black Sky” episode.
It’s once again Ducky (David McCallum) via MTAC, who revealed that the Soviets had been working on a weapon of mass destruction and that when Yuri (Themo Melikidze) tortured Sokolov in last week’s part one of the season finale, he may have gotten the necessary info for Russia to already have put the wheels in motion to be constructing a prototype. And if not Russia, then oligarch Kostya Valkov, Yuri’s father, could be the mastermind behind the pending attack on the U.S.
So, that’s what sends Nick undercover—to do a job. But while he’s there, he befriends a fellow prisoner who says he was framed—don’t they all?—but Nick believes him, especially when he sees the man who comes to visit. And it is this mystery man that sends Nick rogue, leading to a cliffhanger of an ending. Will Nick step over the line and take the law into his own hands?
