NCIS: New Orleans will include a pandemic storyline, but how?

NCIS: New Orleans joins the list of shows with a pandemic storyline

Medical dramas are including the pandemic in their upcoming episodes, but so are TV crime dramas. NCIS: New Orleans Season 7 will include a pandemic element to it, but not quite the same way medical dramas do.

According to TVLine, we’ll see a focus on how many coroners are struggling to deal with work during the lockdowns and quarantine necessities during COVID-19.

How will NCIS: New Orleans include the pandemic?

More from NCIS: New Orleans News

CCH Pounder shares that we’ll see the pandemic from Loretta’s point for view, which makes sense as the coroner in the series. We’ll open the NCIS: New Orleans Season 7 premiere partway through the pandemic, with Loretta dealing with being understaffed and everyone overwhelmed by the pandemic.

There’s going to be a body that comes in that shakes everything up. The idea is to bring us a look at what New Orleans was really like during the earlier days of the pandemic, along with a focus on the people refusing to wear masks.

The body to come in will be personal to Loretta. It is someone Loretta counseled on how to protect themselves during the pandemic, and they’ve clearly not listened to her advice.

And it sounds like this isn’t going to have a “happily ever after” type ending to. Pounder shared her praise for “Biased,” the Black Lives Matter episode of NCIS: New Orleans Season 6. By the end of the 42-minute episode, things still didn’t quite tie up neatly. There are still a lot of questions and still a lot of heavy emotion, especially from Loretta and Charles Michael Davis’s new character, Quentin Carter.

It was certainly a powerful episode that brought racial bias up. It didn’t have answers for everything, but it gave us an insight into Quentin’s passion to make NCIS and the police overall better for everyone, especially Black people. This was before the Black Lives Matter protests after the murder of George Floyd, so I’d expect more to come during NCIS: New Orleans Season 7.

Pounder makes it clear that we should be ready for an opinionated and passionate Loretta. She will stick her neck out when it comes to the pandemic and be a passionate voice to help bring the numbers down.

One thing we don’t have yet is a return date. It sounds like NCIS: New Orleans Season 7 is set to film in late August or early September, which could mean a late fall return date. CBS hasn’t set any dates in stone just yet.

Is it too early to do a storyline focused on the pandemic? What do you hope to see on NCIS: New Orleans Season 7? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

NCIS: New Orleans Season 7 is set to premiere in fall 2020.