Just one week after the Fly Team shakeup that saw Station 19 alum Jay Hayden leave FBI: International, Smitty will be in the spotlight when the case takes place on her old stomping grounds. For the next new episode in the 2025 TV schedule on February 11, Smitty will be back on the campus of her old university, and there are going to be complications that are a lot more personal than the potential murder of the week. Actress Eva-Jane Willis spoke with CinemaBlend about what to expect in this week's episode, as well as which member of the Fly Team will be Smitty's best source of support.
The next new episode of FBI: International is called "Veritas Fidelis," which fans will be able to watch on February 11 at 9 p.m. ET and/or stream afterwards with a Paramount+ subscription. It will be Smitty's first case after she offered to leave the Fly Team so that Tyler Booth could stay, and it'll put her through the emotional wringer. With the above clip shedding some light ahead of time, Eva-Jane Willis opened up about how her character's personal history comes into play with the case, saying:
At first, we learn that an American student has been found dead on the campus of this Ivy League university, the British equivalent, and because Smitty happens to be local at the time, she goes to the site… [The student] has been found dead, and the local police believe it's an accident, but Smitty thinks maybe not, and that's why she calls the Fly Team to come and investigate. Her own relationship with the university is quite complicated, because it turns out that she went there but was excluded for bad behavior. It gets quite tricky for Smitty, because she's then juggling with her own personal feelings about her own shame and regret about what happened with the school versus dealing with the case. And obviously that can sometimes get in the way when things get personal.
This isn't going to be a situation of Smitty happily returning to her alma mater, as she was expelled for "bad behavior" before graduating. The above clip sheds some more light, as she tells Raines that she lost her opportunity at the university because somebody else's gin bottle was found in her room, and it's clear that there's plenty of baggage to complicate the case.
And since the action of FBI: International is set overseas rather than in New York City, the school in question isn't the Hudson University that has caused problems in the worlds of Law & Order and FBI over the years. Smitty's former school is a fictional one, although Willis shared that the show was able to film on the campus of the real-life Cambridge, which was "absolutely beautiful."
Smitty just might not have entirely beautiful memories of her time there! When I asked Eva-Jane Willis how much her character will need to lean on her teammates in "Veritas Fidelis," she shared:
Episode 11 shows how much she really relies on Raines more so than anyone else in the team, and that goes back to last season, when she was forced to go home to speak to her mother about a case. It was Raines who was there with her, and it was Raines who held her hand at the end of that episode, when she had had this awful revelation that the man she thought was her father, wasn't her real father, and it was Raines who was there when she shed a tear for that relationship. And again, it's him who's there for her in Episode 11.
Raines had been a shoulder to lean on during the episode that introduced Smitty's parents last year, and that will evidently be the case in 2025 for her return to the U.K. She already dropped some backstory on him in the sneak peek clip, but based on Eva-Jane Willis' comments, it seems like a safe bet that Smitty's story is going to get heavier than what she shared in that scene. The actress went on:
When things get difficult, I think he's the only one that she feels that she can be vulnerable around. I think she has a really great rapport with the whole team, but Raines is the one who, when he's there, for some reason, all of her guard comes right down and the wall comes down because I think for the rest of the time we see quite a solid wall that she keeps up to protect herself.
It remains to be seen just how "difficult" things will get for Smitty in the next episode, but fans can count on seeing Raines as somebody she feels particularly comfortable around. Carter Redwood's character has always been caring when it comes to his fellow teammates, and was among the most upset about what had happened to Vo. Hopefully the special dynamic with Smitty will be what she needs on February 11, in FBI: International's usual 9 p.m. ET time slot on CBS.
You can find FBI: International right in the middle of CBS' primetime block on Tuesday nights, which starts with FBI in the wake of Jubal's win at 8 p.m. ET and ends with FBI: Most Wanted after a particularly twisted group of bad guys at 10 p.m. ET. If you need to catch up on any or all three, the latest episodes of the 2024-2025 TV season are streaming on Paramount+.
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