The following contains spoilers from the April 4 FBI crossover event.
As CBS’ 3-way FBI crossover event drew to a close, not only did Special Agent Stuart Scola help save thousands of New Yorkers’ lives (though not with any bomb-defusing skills!), he may have gotten a life partner out of the deal.
In the crossover’s opening hour (the FBI: International episode), Nina Chase (played by FBI‘s Shantel Van Santen) got shot while helping the Fly Team storm a house in Italy where some terrorists were holding up. Jubal (Jeremy Sisto) had to race back to New York to continue investigating the looming threat, so he asked Forrester (Luke Kleintank) to stay with hospitalized, pregnant Nina, whose condition was extremely touch-and-go.
In the second hour (the FBI episode), Jubal and Isobel (Alana De La Garza) made the difficult but prudent decision to not tell Scola about Nina being shot, seeing as he was busy navigating an already precarious undercover assignment. Alas, in the course of said UC work, Scola got wind of an FBI agent being gunned down in Italy. Forrester, unaware that Jubal was keeping his team in the dark, confirmed Scola’s worst fears in a phone call.
“When Scola learns that Nina was shot. the first thing that goes through his mind is the way that he finds it out is such a betrayal,” FBI‘s John Boyd tells TVLine. “It’s absolutely not OK.”
Yet, Jubal and Isobel did have a point. “What do Scola’s higher-ups have to do, what decision to they have to make, in order to save thousands of lives?” recounts Boyd. “And that’s a tough thing to hear, that it’s not about you.”
Still, that made Scola’s bosses no less a target for his seething anger. “He can’t be there [for Nina in Italy], there’s nothing he can do, so the only thing he can respond to is the people that kept it from him,” says Boyd. “That really sets him off.”
At the end of the third hour (the FBI: Most Wanted episode) — after the planned bombing of the John F. Kennedy International Airport was averted — Scola made tracks for Rome and reunited with Nina at her hospital bedside.
“How do you feel?” he asked the stabilized patient.
“I’ve been better.”
“What about the baby? Is he OK?”
“I think so,” Nina said, placing Scola’s palm on her bump. “Felt him kicking….”
Scola then looked intently at Nina, and with three not-so-little words encapsulated all that he had been feeling, so far away and helpless.
“I love you.”
“I love you, too,” Nina replied back, through tears. “A lot.”
Reflecting on the couple’s first ILYs, Boyd affirms that Nina’s brush with death “put them in a situation that is catastrophic, and people grow closer from that.”
Moving forward, “It deepens their relationship a great deal,” he adds, “and hopefully they make a decision to be together and to love one another.”
What did you think of the Nina scare, and the crossover as a whole?
