[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the NCIS Season 21 premiere “Algún Día.”]
Is Nick Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) a murderer? Well, as NCIS shows us in the Season 21 premiere, he would be somewhat justified, given that the man who ends up dead, Maurice Riva (Al Sapienza), made his and his family’s lives a nightmare when they were growing up.
But as the episode goes on, it becomes clear that he’s not the one responsible, though he’s protecting the person he thinks is his sister. After all, “someday” was what they’d said as kids … which is why he doesn’t even want her to be his lawyer. And so that’s why TV Insider had to bring in Wilmer Valderrama for our first weekly NCIS aftershow for the CBS drama, NCIS: Case Closed, with our Kate Hahn.
“I had this crazy idea that we should send Torres to prison,” Valderrama reveals of the Season 20 finale. Then, he got the support of the network and co-showrunners David J. North and Steven D. Binder. “They went all in. And then, at that point, they had to work backward,” he explains. “We started really digging in on the very different layers we haven’t peeled away from Torres.” That eventually all led to that final scene in the finale, and then it became a matter of figuring out what would come next.
Robert Voets/CBS
Both Torres and his sister try to protect each other, with the truth that neither of them killed Riva (another woman whose life he had made hell did, in self-defense) coming out after he lands himself back in prison (this time not undercover) and is injured badly enough to end up in the infirmary.
“That scene, which is a major revelation for Torres and his sister, but also a major eye-opening moment for Parker [Gary Cole] and McGee [Sean Murray] of seeing his team member that had already made a decision that he was going to go to this prison to die, and before he died, he was going to try to make something right,” Valderrama explains. “When he sees his sister, he feels like we’re now really in trouble because I made a decision to take this blame knowing that I have no place of return, and now my sister is in the mix and also a suspect.”
For the actor, that was a “really refreshing” scene. “I feel like I have never really seen a scene like that on television, the fact that they both did what family would do for each other, and that was at the most traumatic moment of their lives,” he shares.
Watch the full video above for much more from Valderrama about the episode, Torres’ past, and this season. And don’t forget to come back each week for an inside look at the new episode of NCIS from those who make the show.
NCIS, Mondays, 9/8c, CBS