NCIS: Sydney just revealed the truth about Blue, and it’s not what anyone would have expected to change the character forever!
Caution: This article contains SPOILERS for NCIS: Sydney season 3 episode 2
Since NCIS: Sydney began, Bluebird “Blue” Gleeson (Mavournee Hazel) has been a scene-stealer. The lab tech is usually the one going through evidence and clues for the rest of the NCIS team with a fun humor to herself. She bonds with Doc (William McInnes) and her nervous demeanor has toughened up over the years.
However, Blue is also a woman with secrets. She’s hinted at a dark past, evidenced by her tattoos, and only Doc knows that the day she claims is her birthday really isn’t. The season 2 finale ended with Blue coming home to find a woman waiting for her, and Blue was seemingly terrified at seeing her. Season 3 opened with Blue on leave and Doc concerned. That set up the aptly titled “True Blue,” which gave us the answers no one expected for the character!
Who truly is Blue in NCIS: Sydney?
After Doc broke into Blue’s apartment searching for her, the team finally decided it was time to get answers. They uncovered that Blue had a twin brother, but also found a skeleton hidden in her apartment that turned out to be the remains of Blue’s father. Thanks to a little trickery, the team discovered Blue was really named Faith and had been in jail as a teenager due to trying to rob a scanner to identify the bones. She’d then educated herself in forensic work and joined the police force under an assumed name.
Blue and her twin brother Eli had grown up in a commune run by Aspira that was clearly a cult. Eli was convinced their father had abandoned them, not died and wouldn’t listen to Blue telling him otherwise. Things got serious when the team investigated and realized this was a death cult ready to commit mass suicide.
Blue had done her own investigation and during the big ceremony, took a swig from Aspira’s glass to show her own drink was fine. Turns out, Aspira was no cultist but wanted the entire group dead so she could sell off the land for a tidy profit.
The NCIS team burst in while poor Eli literally drank the Kool-Aid (well, poisoned tea) to collapse, while Aspira was arrested. Eli recovered in the hospital, with Blue meeting the grandmother she never knew she had. It seemed like a happy ending, but the last scene had Mackey and JD trying to figure out what to do about the knowledge that a key member of their team was an ex-con.
That was a huge series of revelations that promise to change the show in the future!
How does the truth about Blue change things?
Speaking to TV Insider, showrunner Morgan O’Neill discussed how the writers enjoyed spreading out the mystery of Blue and the revelations. He especially enjoys how viewers can now rewatch the first two seasons and see Blue in a different light. Meanwhile, her future is going to be complicated now that the team knows the real her.
“She’s forced to acknowledge that she has been, for a whole bunch of really good reasons, deceptive. She hasn’t told the truth. And when you fail to tell the truth to people that you love and respect, that impacts trust, right? It’s impossible not to feel, on some levels, betrayed by that. So, how does Blue even start to repair that breach in trust? And I think, as we’ll see, that’s a huge mountain to climb, but in finding NCIS, in finding herself where she is, for the first time in her entire life, she has found family. And that’s something, when you find it, that is worth fighting for.”
O’Neill also hinted that while the team will try to keep it quiet, it’s likely sooner or later Blue’s past as an ex-con comes up and could get them all in trouble.
“Back to the theme of Season 3, which is that you can’t outrun your past, here is an example of Mackey and JD deciding to actively try and outrun their past. Well, we know how that ends up — not well — so it will come back to roost, but for now they’re caught in that tricky situation where they’ve only just put it back, what do you do? You can’t throw her to the wolves. If Blue is feeling like, for the first time, she’s found her people, Mackey and JD feel the responsibility of having provided her with that, too…The chickens will come home to roost, that’s for sure.”
Discovering Blue has a criminal past was a twist and it certainly alters the view of this normally bright woman. She’ll have to handle the revelations, and her brother, perhaps, is still under the cult’s influence. The team will be a mix of some just accepting it and moving on, while others may worry about the implications when it gets out that a convicted felon has been handling criminal cases for two years.
This was a fascinating way to expand one of NCIS: Sydney’s biggest characters and how Blue, and the team, move on following these revelations will drive season 3 on more.
NCIS: Sydney airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on CBS.
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