Warning: SPOILERS for the NCIS episode “Moonlit” are ahead!
We’re coming up on one year since the NCIS Season 21 finale aired and set up an intriguing mystery for Gary Cole’s Alden Parker concerning a little girl he didn’t recognize named Lily. Since his harrowing experience in “Reef Madness,” Parker has been seen visions of Lily while out living his life, and it got to the point where he sought out Dr. Grace Confalone to help him deal with this bizarre occurrence. Now “Moonlit,” the latest NCIS episode to air on the 2025 TV schedule, has delivered a major reveal about the origins of the Lily mystery. The unfortunate tradeoff, however, is that it came with some tragic backstory concerning Parker that shocked me.
The main story in tonight’s NCIS episode saw the team working once again with Special Agent Dale Sawyer, Nick Torres’ “nemesis” who previously appeared in Season 18’s “Gut Punch,” Season 19’s “Fight or Flight” and Season 20’s “Big Rig.” But in the midst of this case involving Sawyer’s privates security side gig, an endangered frog species and a messy divorce that ended in one half of the couple being murdered (stream “Moonlit” with a Paramount+ subscription for the full context), Parker was still struggling with Lily’s lingering presence. He even went to Jimmy Palmer at the beginning of the episode to have him sketch how the girl looked.
Last December, NCIS showrunner Steve D. Binder informed CinemaBlend that the Lily mystery would lead to Parker having “an earth-shifting understanding of his family history.” “Moonlit” finally delivered on that front after Parker showed his father, Roman, Jimmy’s sketch over a video call. While Roman didn’t recognize Lily, he was unwilling to discuss Parker’s mother when pressed by his son, as she’s always been a sore subject between them. However, soon after, he left his Las Vegas getaway, took a red-eye back to Washington D.C., and went to see Parker to tell him the truth about how his mother died.
Rather than dying of a stroke a few years after she left her husband and son like Parker had thought for decades, Parker’s mother was instead killed instantly in a drunk driving incident. According to Roman, one day she came home inebriated and with the young Parker in tow, saying that the two of them were visiting “friends,” though Roman had no idea who she was talking about and Parker doesn’t remember that day at all. His mother and father got into an argument, she drove off in a rage, and Roman yelled out that if she left, she should never come back. An hour later, the sheriff took Roman over a few towns over to show her car wrapped around a tree.
Alden Parker learning the truth about his mother’s death would have made this NCIS episode a big enough deal on its own, but “Moonlit” had one last twist to deliver. Late at night, Gary Cole’s character found a newspaper clipping online of a story covering the crash his mother died in. Upon closer inspection, he realized that a little girl photographed near the scene looked exactly like Lily. Meaning, whoever Lily is, she’s somehow connected to his mother.
How is this possible? We may not necessarily get that answer next week, but I have to think that this mystery will finally be solved by the time NCIS Season 22 is over, especially since there’s still the “flight plan” for the Kansas City mob to delve into. For now, I’m guessing Lily was part of this group of friends that Parker and his mother were visiting, but that just leads to more questions. Who were these people that his mother was keeping secret from his father? Why didn’t they make themselves known to Roman after she died? And perhaps most importantly, is Lily still alive? If she is, can she shed any light on what happened all those years ago?
Considering that Steven D. Binder also told me that these revelations about Alden Parker’s past would have “present day implications” too, I think there’s a distinct chance we’ll see him meet/reunite with Lily in the present day. However this all turns out, at least Parker finally knows what really happened to his mother, as difficult as it was to hear.
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