‘NCIS’: Should Jessica Knight Join the Team Permanently in Season 19? (POLL)

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Did Special Agents Timothy McGee (Sean Murray), Ellie Bishop (Emily Wickersham), and Nick Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) just work with a future teammate on NCIS? The penultimate episode of Season 18 introduced REACT’s (Regional Enforcement Action Capabilities Training) Jessica Knight (Katrina Law) during a case that saw her entire team killed — and she fit in quite nicely. So should she stick around next season (as was mentioned as a possibility when she was first cast)? We say yes!

Her first episode told us that she does have some pre-established relationships with members of the team — for example, the hug forensic scientist Kaise Hines (Diona Reasonover) greeted her with in their first scene together, and the way she and Dr. Jimmy Palmer (Brian Dietzen) spoke (including her use of his first name).

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She’s not really one for rules; just look at how she tried to sneak out of the hospital and returned to work after the explosion in which she was injured and her teammates died. And seeing the influence she had on Torres to encourage him not to wait for backup before checking out a suspect’s trailer, we can’t help but want to see someone “hold the leash” of the “two attack dogs,” as he put it. Another pairing we’d like to see more of: Knight and Director Vance (Rocky Carroll). She insisted on staying on the case, and he let her.

But it was really the conversation Knight and McGee shared following the funeral for her fallen teammates that sealed the deal because it felt like one Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) would have had with his newest agent (as he did with Sasha Alexander‘s Kate Todd back in the series premiere). And McGee is the one leading the team now (with Gibbs suspended).

Knight wondered if it was time to take a step back and admitted she’d “feel like Annie or Harry Potter … an orphan” if she returned to work. “My family’s gone,” she said. “Not sure where I belong now.”

Sonja Flemming/CBS

“That’s the thing about families,” he said (and doesn’t this seem like foreshadowing?). “Sometimes they grow.” And that’s what every agent has found with this team: a family. It feels like it’s Knight’s turn.

Do you want to see Knight become a full-time member of the team next season? Vote in the poll below.

NCIS, Season 18 Finale, Tuesday, May 25, 8/7c, CBS