5 ‘NCIS: LA’ Storylines That Need to Be Resolved By the End of Season 13

The good news is that we can watch the rest of NCIS: LA Season 13 knowing that it will be back next year. CBS renewed it along with NCIS and NCIS: Hawai’i for the 2022-2023 broadcast season. The only problem? LA tends to take multiple seasons to resolve major, ongoing storylines and there are a few we really hope we don’t have to wait until at least September to see how they play out.

From Hetty Lange’s (Linda Hunt) mission in Syria that is slowly becoming less and less mysterious to a chilling deep fake of one of the agents to a criminal out there threatening the life of a member of the team, there are just too many loose ends that don’t need to be carried into Season 14. After all, now there’s plenty of time to introduce new multi-episode arcs.

Read on as we break down five ongoing storylines we need to see resolved in at least some way by the Season 13 finale on May 22. Really, any of these could be good for the 300th episode (airing on May 8).

Katya, the Russian Spy

Russian spy Katya (Eve Harlow) remains a thorn in Callen (Chris O’Donnell) and Anna’s (Bar Paly) sides, now going so far as to use a deep fake of the NCIS agent. It’s just a matter of when, not if, she’ll strike, and the waiting is the worst part. Considering we met Katya in Season 10 (“The One That Got Away”) and she’s now raised the stakes by showing just how many people she can fool with Callen’s deep fake (his doctor, a bank, Anna), everything has to come to a head sooner rather than later.

Callen’s Education

As Callen learned at the beginning of this season, his and Hetty’s history goes back further than he originally thought: to a junior version of the CIA’s selection process. Since discovering the truth, Callen has made it his own mission to get to the bottom of it, but Hetty left the U.S. for her own op before he could speak with her about it. We’ve seen young Callen before and during the testing he now remembers, but he still needs answers to put all the pieces together.

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Hetty’s Mission

Hetty briefly stopped in L.A. at the beginning of the season before returning to her secretive mission that has taken her to Syria. The team has been kept in the dark about most of what she’s up to, and the last we heard, she was present where there was a U.S. drone strike. She was meeting with the target, leading Callen to wonder if she ordered the strike herself. Hetty’s old friend, Harris Keane (Jeff Kober, last seen in Season 10), told Callen he was operating as her overwatch as she tried to negotiate for the release of some of her “people” (possibly NCIS) posing as Western journalists. No one knows what happened to her after the strike. That’s something we definitely have to find out this season.

Kessler’s Threat

Right now, Kensi (Daniela Ruah) must live with the knowledge that a criminal she once helped put away (for crimes including human trafficking) and has threatened to kill her (quite memorably) is walking free due to a presidential pardon. He’s also made sure to remind her he’s out there with a postcard. His eventual return and what he might do then to Kensi or Deeks (Eric Christian Olsen) has been hanging over their heads like a sword of Damocles for long enough.

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Densi & Kids

The subject of kids first came up for Kensi and Deeks before they were even engaged (but did lead to the first unofficial proposal in Season 7’s “The Seventh Child”). They haven’t always been on the same page, but after a long journey that included trying and failing to get pregnant, they’ve turned to adoption and fostering. And it seemed that they might make a family with Rosa (Natalia Del Riego), a young girl Kensi met on a case. While that wasn’t meant to be (she’s with a distant aunt), the couple did meet her friend, Pilar (Josie Nivar), at the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the latest episode, “Pandora’s Box.” Let’s hope that has a happy ending.

NCIS: Los Angeles, Sundays, 9/8c, CBS