Last season ended with Special Agent Tiffany Wallace (Katherine Renee Kane) completely spent after a harrowing struggle to track down and finally kill the terrorist who murdered fellow agent and friend Hobbs (Roshawn Franklin). She was so burned out that she quit the FBI’s New York office. As Season 7 begins, it turns out that kind of feeling is catching: Special Agent Maggie Bell (Missy Peregrym) is reconsidering her future as she’s struggling to raise Ella (Rose Decker), the young daughter of her late friend and colleague Jessica Blake (Charlotte Sullivan).
“She loves Ella and feels fulfilled caring for her, and she wants to provide stability and joy,” Peregrym explains, “but the demands of her job create conflict within her. Is she doing enough?” So far, she’s confiding in her partner Special Agent OA Zadar (Zeeko Zaki) and Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jubal Valentine (Jeremy Sisto). “You’ll see who she calls on as the season goes on.” Could that mean a new romance? “She’s made her job her priority after her husband died [before the show’s storyline began], but having Ella has opened her heart up again…so we’ll see,” Peregrym teases.
Showrunner Mike Weiss adds that she’ll have to balance this new responsibility with her duties for Special Agent in Charge Isobel Castille (Alana De La Garza) and her work partner, OA. “And Maggie is not alone with that dilemma,” he adds. Special Agent Stuart Scola (John Boyd) must also figure out how to be both a Fed and a sometimes-single father to his child with romantic partner Nina Chase (FBI: Most Wanted’s Shantel VanSanten), who’s often away on assignment.
There are tests for OA and Isobel as well. Beyond being put in danger when a friend from his Army Ranger days returns, OA is also trying to fit into the wealthy world of his girlfriend Gemma (Comfort Clinton). Isobel endures a serious health scare that, says Weiss, “will give us a chance to delve into her personal life, a life she works hard to keep private.”
While Tiffany’s loss is still felt, the premiere finds brilliant profiler Syd Ortiz (Lisette Olivera) moving from the Behavioral Analysis Unit to the New York office. And the Feds’ roster this season will certainly be full, with online conspiracies, corporate espionage and campus protests, and high-risk undercover gigs, but their first case with Ortiz—a complicated and perilous one—opens with the assassination of a Brooklyn plumber.
“Our team is launched into a globe-spanning investigation that ruffles feathers with the CIA,” Weiss reveals. “It isn’t a terrorism story but a spy game being played by government agencies when the FBI threatens to reveal mistakes the CIA made years ago. I can promise that there are dark forces at play on both sides of the Atlantic.” The surprising antagonist: A “secretive and cagey” former CIA case officer whose brief was in counterterrorism overseas and whose goal is to make this investigation disappear—by any means possible. “In the end,” adds Weiss, “our team will have to choose between keeping innocent people safe or going along with a governmental cover-up.”
For those who have read that this season major characters will appear in a few less episodes for budgetary reasons, Weiss assures that “characters will be in almost every episode of the season. We’re trying not to the let their absences distract from the propulsive FBI stories were telling week to week.”
FBI, Season 7 Premiere, Tuesday, October 15, 8/7c, CBS
