NCIS Recap 03/13/23: Season 20 Episode 16 “Butterfly Effect”

NCIS Recap 03/13/23: Season 20 Episode 16 "Butterfly Effect"

Tonight on CBS NCIS returns with an all-new Monday, March 13, 2023, season 20 episode 16 called, “Butterfly Effect,” and we have your weekly NCIS recap below. In tonight’s NCIS season 20 episode 16, “Butterfly Effect” as per the CBS synopsis, “The NCIS team jumps into motion to investigate who is responsible for a potential bio terror attack at a strip mall parking garage. Also, Knight’s father deals with a health scare while in Japan.” 

So make sure to bookmark this spot and come back between 9:00 PM – 10:00 PM ET for our NCIS recap. While you wait for the recap make sure to check out all our NCIS recaps, spoilers, news & more, right here!

Tonight’s NCIS Recap begins now – Refresh Page often to get the most current updates!

In tonight’s NCIS episode, there was a possible bio terror attack at a Navy Recruitment Center. NCIS were called in to investigate. Parker and his team were told that whoever tried to enter the center or the connecting parking garage had lost consciousness.

There were two cops that went in there when they hadn’t known about the danger and neither of them walked out on their own accord. The cops hadn’t wanted to send any more of their people inside. It was up to NCIS to enter the area. They wore body suits and they helped as many people get to a gurney as possible. And they also found out what had caused everyone to pass out.

Someone had left behind an abandoned cannister. The cannister must have held something truly serious because whatever was inside was enough to knock out everyone in a large parking garage and that was with ventilation. But ultimately everyone seemed on the road to recovery. They later came to at the hospital. There was nothing serious about their condition. The most they suffered from was a knock on the head when they passed out. It was the weirdest terrorist attack the team had ever seen.

Except they later learned this wasn’t about terrorism. It was about good old fashion greed. The cannister was used to knock out everyone in the building. The people who set it off had wanted access codes as well as banking information of some people in the area. Most of these places belonged to the DC power players.

The ones who literally control policy. There was a lot of money at play with these people and that’s why they were targeted. It wasn’t about the Navy at all. And so NCIS became concerned for people that might have been exposed in the theft.

They began calling around to everyone whose information was exposed. McGee got a lot of people blaming him personally for what happened and there were quite a few of “I want to talk to your manager”.

The rich and the famous have gotten used to controlling things. They demanded that NCIS capture these thieves and they hated going through the motions of changing their passwords. They probably used the same password for everything. McGee and others got DNA from that cannister. They knew they were looking for Phillip Legrand.

Legrand was wanted by the FBI. He was an expert thief and the knockout gas he used hadn’t even belonged to him. He stole that too. NCIS began looking for Legrand. They also hadn’t heard back from US Senator Constance Miller’s people because she was flying back to the United States. But no one was answering at her house either. Miller has a live in housekeeper. NCIS went to her house and they found the housekeeper passed out on the floor from another cannister. And they came across Dorothy in a bodysuit.

Dorothy was one of the people they rescued from the parking garage. It turns out Dorothy was in fact Legrand’s daughter and she was doing everything possible to steal from the senator because she was trying to rescue her father. Dorothy and her father steal from people. They make sure to take from the rich. They never hurt anyone. They also didn’t do jobs for other people. They have a code. Only someone contacted Dorothy a couple of weeks back. They were trying to hire her and she turned down the job because of the code.

Then she returned to her camper to find the place ransacked and her father missing. She gets another mysterious text telling her to rob the senator’s safe. They wanted a hard drive that was in there. Which didn’t make sense to the senator because the only thing she has on that hard drive were a bunch of pictures. She has to travel a lot because of her job and she likes taking photos with people, but her passion was taking photos of baked goods. She loved eating baked goods around the world. And so the hard drive seemed harmless.

But someone wanted it enough to abduct Legrand. Dorothy was just trying to save her dad. Her story especially touched Special Agent Knight because Knight’s father wasn’t feeling well and somehow he ended up on a ventilator. He even needed surgery. Knight was going to fly to Japan to be with her dad when she saw how much pain Dorothy was in and she decided to stay on to help recover Dorothy’s dad. There wasn’t anything she could do to save her own father only she thought she could save Legrand.

They were going to give the kidnapper what he wanted. They were going to give him a copy of the hard drive to get Legrand back and they even pretended that Dorothy double crossed them because they suspected that she was being watched. Dorothy did everything she was supposed to. She went to the meeting place. She saw her dad beaten up. She handed over the hard drive and NCIS moved in to arrest the man behind it all. Another person that they rescued from the garage. He claimed his name was Nate Billings. Only that wasn’t his name.

He was actually a Russian spy. He wanted the hard drive because the senator has a photo with herself and three other sleeper Russian spies that helped with her campaign. It all seemed very suspicious, but they couldn’t ask Nate because State Department took him and they were working with Russia to send him back to his homeland. And so NCIS had to let it go.

And Jimmy surprisingly came through for his girlfriend. He talked to her dad’s doctors. He was able to theorize what led to the initial infection and so he saved her dad’s life. Something Knight was never going to forget.

THE END!