NCIS Season 22, Episode 15 “Moonlit,” brings back a familiar face from the show’s past. The returning character is none other than Special Agent Dale Sawyer (played by Zane Holtz), Torres’s (Wilmer Valderrama) NCIS frenemy, who, according to the episode’s synopsis, will have ties to a Navy Lieutenant’s death.
Who Was Dale Sawyer on NCIS?
Dale Sawyer is an NCIS Special Agent assigned to the Navy Yard in Washington D.C. He was first introduced in Season 18 of the show. When Sawyer first appeared on the show, it wouldn’t have been fair to call him Torres’ friend, but it also wouldn’t have been fair to call him Torres’ enemy, considering they both worked for the NCIS. In fact, at first, the word frenemy would have worked.
That’s because, in the beginning, Torres was worried Sawyer was there to replace him. It wasn’t helped by the fact that Torres found it hard to really bond with the rest of the team, and Sawyer is a really personable guy. But even though the two butted heads at the beginning, they eventually found something in common once Sawyer decided that, like Torres, he was also interested in undercover work.
In total, Zane Holtz’s Sawyer has appeared in the show in at least one episode in Seasons 18, 19, and 20. He didn’t appear in Season 21, but that was the strike-shortened season. Although we haven’t seen all that much of him, we’ve seen enough for his storyline to grow from an adversary who butted heads with Torres to an agent who confided in Torres about his undercover op and who Torres felt a genuine connection with.
This all comes to a head in the show’s 450th episode, Sawyer’s last appearance, which sees Torres begin to “form a very unexpected bond with another person” in the form of Sawyer, as Rocky Carroll, who directed the episode, told TVLine.
In the hour, we see Sawyer end up on an undercover op Torres turned down. We also see Torres, who has a lot of experience undercover, try to help Sawyer with his op. Torres offers Sawyer a way out as Sawyer is struggling under the pressure of living as two different people. Sawyer also knows that without Torres, there probably won’t be a case, so he refuses’ Torres’ invitation to give up. After that, the team gets a call about a dead body found at the apartment Sawyer has been staying at for the mission. This leads Torres to believe that Sawyer is dead and that his death is on him for not convincing him to pull out of the op.
However, the dead body does not belong to Sawyer, but to another undercover agent, and the end of the episode sees Torres and Sawyer team up — alongside NCIS — to take down the bad guys and save the day. It all feels like it could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship for Torres and Sawyer, but we haven’t actually seen Torres and Sawyer together since. At least not until “Moonlit,” which makes his return all the more interesting.