After appearing in NCIS Season 18’s final two episodes, Katrina Law stuck around to play Jessica Knight as a series regular starting in Season 19, and it didn’t take long for her character to start forming a romantic dynamic with Brian Dietzen’s Jimmy Palmer. By the end of that season, the two were basically in a relationship, but sadly, that came to an end in the Season 21 finale when Jessica decided to become the new Camp Pendleton REACT instructor. That’s resulted in these two characters settling into “a new normal,” as showrunner Steven Binder described it, when Season 22 begins on the 2024 TV schedule, although eventually Jessica and Jimmy will have to come face to face again.
Binder opened up about what’s coming up in NCIS Season 22 in a conversation with TV Insider, which included re-discussing topics like Alden Parker not recognizing the little girl in the hallucination he experienced in “Reef Madness,” as well as how the main team is dissolved at the start of the new season. On the subject of Jessica and Jimmy, the showrunner said:
It’s months later. Knight’s on the West Coast [in her new job as chief REACT training officer]. They’ve settled into the new normal of not being together. Jimmy is dating. We’re going to learn a little bit about that. He’s been busy as a single man; that will make an appearance in the most inopportune time. [In the premiere] Knight encounters a very serious problem involving her skills as a hostage negotiator. There’s certain things you never do, and that’s what [she] does. As a result, her and Jimmy are going to get a chance to have part two of the conversation that we didn’t see in the finale. There’s a Part 3 to that conversation that we’ll see in Episode 4 when World War III is starting.
The “World War III” Binder is referring to involves NCIS being in charge “of a very little thing and that little thing has the potential to become a big thing,” which they’re trying to avoid. Binder described this as “[an] almost real-time episode” that has “huge stakes that can blow up” when it comes to this wider threat, but then also huge stakes for Jimmy Palmer and Jessica Knight. During Part 3 of their conversation, they’ll continue trying to figure out “who and what they are and what they’re going to be and what they’re not going to be.”
When Steven Binder was asked if he talked with Brian Dietzen and Katrina Law about the direction they wanted their characters’ relationship to take, he answered:
With an actor’s character, if [actors] care about what they’re doing — and all of our people do — they’ll be protective. They’ll have stakes, they’ll have thoughts. I took both of their temperatures. What do you guys think? Where are you guys at? They both had very different takes on ways their characters would respond. I was like, this is gold. I’ll blame them if you don’t like it, is what I’m saying. [Laughs]
I’m not usually one for shipping, but I liked Jimmy and Jessica being paired together romantically, as it was a nice change of pace from the ‘will they, won’t they’ thing that Tony DiNozzo and Ziva David had, followed by Nick Torres and Ellie Bishop. Since Katrina Law will remain part of NCIS’ main cast, eventually Jessica will end up back in Washington D.C., so hopefully she can patch things up with Jimmy when that time comes. If that’s not in the cards, at least we can assume they’ll remain on friendly terms with each other… probably.
Catch up on Jimmy and Jessica’s time together by streaming NCIS with your Paramount+ subscription. NCIS Season 22 premieres Monday October 14 at 8 pm ET, and NCIS: Origins, the prequel about Leroy Jethro Gibbs, will immediately follow.
