NCIS Season 22, Episode 8, “Out of Control” focuses on a car hijacking — and Alden Parker’s leftover trauma from the Season 21 finale. Or perhaps from his childhood? It’s hard to tell. All we know is that in the course of the episode, we see the mysterious figure of Lily, the girl that first appears to Parker (Gary Cole) in the Season 21 finale multiple times. And though, by the end of the episode we don’t find out who she is and what she’s there for, we do get a big clue regarding her importance to Parker. But who is Lily? Is she a ghost or a repressed memory of Parker?
What happened to Parker on NCIS?
We don’t get a straight answer about Lily, who Parker claims not to remember — but at the end of the hour, the apparition basically leaves a message for Parker, warning him he can’t tell anyone. What can’t he tell anyone? We’re not sure. Parker hasn’t really learned anything new yet, and ghosts and/or apparitions are notorious for being vague. But there are clearly secrets in his past, presumably secrets related to his mother that some part of his subconscious wants to keep hidden.
Because Lily doesn’t seem to be a ghost, but a repressed memory of Parker. The first hint of this is that Parker’s time seeing Lily also features the figure of his mother, who Parker shares in NCIS Season 22, Episode 8 left when he was young. And despite assuring his shrink that he has no mommy issues, it’s clear that he is protesting way too much. There are indeed some issues there to be uncovered.
These issues cause a great deal of problems for Parker in the episode, from run-of-the-mill distractions to almost death. Run-of-the-mill distractions while driving a car can, after all, cause you to almost crash into another car and all of that. No wonder Knight and Torres (Wilmer Valderrama), who were in the car with him at the time, were a little spooked. And that most of the team found a way to gently suggest he go to therapy.
Knight (Katrina Law), in particular, was insistent. She was, after all, the one who shared the original traumatic experience with him last season, so she of all people knows what he survived and the toll that could have taken. And Knight, perhaps better than anyone, knows that sometimes it’s easier to avoid trauma than face it head-on. But that hardly ever works out, no matter how much you might want it to. Trauma has a way of coming out of the woodwork.
Instead, Parker is going to have to figure out not just who Lily is, but who she was to him, what secrets she’s keeping, and why those secrets could be important to him now. And he probably needs to figure it out soon, particularly if she’s so insistent this is something he must keep to himself. Keeping secrets has never been something this NCIS team has done well, so odds are Parker will manage that for about one episode, maybe two. But considering next week is the mid-season finale, odds are we find out something then so we can stew in it until new episodes return next year. And maybe, it’ll be something that leaves him in literal danger. It’s, after all, been a while since NCIS has left us on a cliffhanger and Lily has proven to be kind of dangerous already.