When Will ‘NCIS: LA’ Reveal What Happened to Hetty?

The NCIS: Los Angeles team has been without its operations manager full-time for quite a while now, and the last we heard, Henrietta “Hetty” Lange (Linda Hunt) was in Syria at the site of a bombing. So when will we get answers as to what happened after that?

“She was in at the beginning of this season and then we had her disappear,” showrunner Scott R. Gemmill told Parade.com. “The plan is to follow that up next year with some reveal.”

So that means that not only will we have to find out how Hetty survived — more on that in a moment — but Special Agent G. Callen (Chris O’Donnell) will also have to wait to talk to her about that CIA project he recently learned he was a part of as a child. He does currently have his hands full, tracking down a man, Arnold Baines (Jere Burns), who was part of it and with the deep fakes Russian spy Katya (Eve Harlow) is using (the latest left inappropriate videos and messages for his superiors).

For now, what we do know is that Hetty was meeting with the target of the U.S. drone strike in Syria, Al-Qaeda leader Mohammad al-Kalmira, in “All the Little Things.” Zasha (Oleysa Rulin), there on Callen’s orders, didn’t find a body, so the assumption was she, her target, and his operatives left before the strike (which everyone agreed may have been called in by Hetty herself). Dr. Nate Getz (Peter Cambor) told Admiral Kilbride (Gerald McRaney) Hetty was meeting with Al-Qaeda leaders to negotiate the release of unknown hostages, and her old friend Harris Keane (Jeff Kober), there as her overwatch, told Callen that those hostages were really her “people,” possibly NCIS.

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Then, in “MWD,” Nate updated Callen about a text he received from Hetty reading “the game’s afoot.” He took it to mean she’s “on foot with or going after al-Kalmira” and hadn’t heard anything since.

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