Warning: SPOILERS for the NCIS episode “Foreign Bodies” are ahead!
In the NCIS Season 20 episode “Guardian,” viewers met Lena Paulsen, an agent for the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), i.e. the Federal Intelligence Service, who was in a casual, no strings relationship with NCIS Director Leon Vance. Two years later, Lena, played by Marem Hassler, was brought back for “Foreign Bodies,” the latest episode of NCIS to air on the 2024 TV schedule. Although there were temporarily some tensions between the two, by the end of this Season 22 installment, it was teased that we’ll be seeing more of her in the future, which pleases me as someone who thinks Vance could use more good things in his life.
This week’s NCIS episode revolved around delegates from the Venezuelan navy, including Admiral Carlos Mendoza, who came to Washington D.C. to have diplomatic talks with the U.S. Navy to form a joint task force to battle piracy in the Caribbean. Vance was leading these talks on behalf of the U.S., but everything became complicated when Diego Barreto, a member of the Venezuelan diplomats’ security team who was actually one of Vance’s undercover agents, died in his office.
Poison was later revealed as the cause for why he fell and cracked his head open, and before he died, Barreto told Vance someone was trying to sabotage the talks. Alden Parker, Timothy McGee, Nick Torres, Jimmy Palmer and Jessica Knight (who’s officially back on the team) subsequently had to remove Barreto’s body without being noticed and deposit it back in his hotel room so that his cover wouldn’t be blown.
This kicked off a serious events that led to Mendoza being outed as Barreto’s killer (as revenge for having an affair with his wife) and a reporter-turned-Hezbollah agent named Robin Cale being identified as the perpetrator trying to disrupt the talks. In the midst of all this, Lena Paulsen came back into Vance’s life. Having retired from German intelligence to become an independent contractor, Lena was tapped by a client to work as a NATO representative for the talks. Later on, it was revealed that Lena was running her own undercover operation on behalf of the BND with Fernando Vega, an undercover agent in Mendoza’s entourage. Lena was also kidnapped by Robin in an attempt to get the talks scrapped, but she was rescued just in time.
Although there was a brief period of tension between Vance and Lena over each of them running their secret operations, for the most part, these two got along splendidly. In fact, while Vance was visiting Parker’s apartment, he recalled how when he was shot (which happened in the NCIS franchise’s 1,000th episode), it made him think about time, specifically how he wanted to spend whatever amount he had left and with whom. Parker also briefly thought about his own near-death experience where he hallucinated seeing a little girl from his childhood he didn’t recognize, but that’s a mystery to be solved later on in NCIS Season 22.
By the end of “Foreign Bodies,” Vance shared with Lena that he wanted to make their romantic relationship official and spend more time with her, especially now that she has an apartment in New York. It turns out that Lena was on the same page, as she gave Vance a key for her new place of residence. Now this isn’t to say that we’re going to start seeing Lena week to week now on NCIS, but with the way this episode ended, I wouldn’t be surprised if she becomes a recurring character. This is a great thing for Vance; the man has been through so much, including nearly dying multiple times and losing his wife Jackie. The more happiness he can find, the better, and seeing more of Lena unquestionably qualifies.
New episodes of NCIS air Mondays at 9 pm ET on CBS, and can be streamed afterwards with a Paramount+ subscription. You can also watch the prequel NCIS: Origins immediately afterwards, which chronicles the life of Leroy Jethro Gibbs when he joined NIS in 1991.
