Spoilers ahead for Episode 8 of FBI: Most Wanted Season 5, called "Supply Chain."
FBI: Most Wanted delivered a crossover with FBI that brought none other than John Boyd over as Stuart Scola for a pair of tense scenes with Shantel VanSanten as Nina Chase. The two characters have spent plenty of time together off-screen in the 2024 TV schedule after the birth of their son at the end of FBI Season 5, but "Supply Chain" was the first episode to actually show the pair together. And what it showed really wasn't great... at first, anyway, when a minor disagreement turned into an ugly conflict. The episode gave them a happy ending, though, and the two stars spoke with CinemaBlend about the fight before the FBI half of the continuing crossover.
"Supply Chain" aired just hours after FBI: Most Wanted was renewed for the 2024-2025 TV season, along with John Boyd's FBI and FBI: International. Nina and Scola weren't in celebratory moods to start the episode, though, as he was touchy about her stockpiling baby supplies (and moving his shoes) while she felt that he was insulting her abilities as a mother. They couldn't really hash the issue out before Scola went to work over on FBI, and the task force caught a local case in New York.
When I had the chance to speak with Shantel VanSanten and John Boyd, I noted that the fight felt realistic for characters in their positions, even if it was also ugly. They opened up about getting to play big character moments in procedural TV shows, with VanSanten saying:
I feel so grateful for those moments. I understand and know what the show is, and I love each week knowing the crime and solving it, but getting to really deep dive into a character and expose them for maybe their ugliest moments, and some of their best moments. Like, that's what makes us human, and it's important, and such an honor to be able to do those things. That's why you become an actor, is to show people and relate to people in those ways.
Neither Nina nor Scola seemed particularly grateful for much of anything during the fight early in "Supply Chain," but that wasn't the case for the actors. Plus, after Nina had a talk with Roxy Sternberg's Barnes about the stresses of the job combined with stresses of parenthood, she was able to compromise and see Scola's point of view. John Boyd agreed with what VanSanten said, and then added his own perspective:
To piggyback on that, it's so important for an audience to see a new dad who's stressed out on his way to work, who's sort of stressed out and being a jerk and demanding and how couples fight and repair. It's time to see that. It's time to see how they live a real life.
The fight really worked because neither one of them was fully right and neither was fully wrong, and they had a sweet scene at the end of the hour of finding common ground again. They really were just stressed parents lashing out, and – as John Boyd noted – that's not something that audiences always get to see.
Personally, I was happy to see a quiet moment between Barnes and Nina, which helped Nina to reframe her argument with Scola and understand that she was overcompensating due to her own childhood. It lead to the quiet moment of "repair" by the final scene of the episode. Shantel VanSanten added:
We won't spoil too much, but I think it was really important to have these two moments for people to see the repair, for people to see how it's okay to fight and disagree and bump heads and be two really strong, opinionated people that do the same job, that are working hard, that want to do their best, but the way that sometimes you just miss each other and the way that you can kind of come back together in honesty and vulnerability.
Luckily, the wait isn't too long to see what VanSanten wasn't spoiling. The second leg of the Nina/Scola crossover will be the next episode of FBI, airing on Tuesday, April 16 at 8 p.m. ET. Whether they'll be on solid ground after moving past their fight on Most Wanted remains to be seen. Check out the promo for the episode, called "Best Laid Plans," for next week:
Scola and Nina will be going undercover in the next crossover episode, bringing Shantel VanSanten to FBI to join forces with John Boyd! If you want to revisit earlier episodes of their characters' journeys across FBI and Most Wanted, you can find both shows (along with International) streaming with a Paramount+ subscription.
As always, FBI airs on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET and Most Wanted airs on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET, all on CBS. Don't forget to check out what Missy Peregrym told us about playing Maggie for nearly seven "very hard" years so far!
