The following contains spoilers from the series premiere of NCIS: Tony & Ziva, now streaming on Paramount+.
More than 18 months in the waiting, NCIS: Tony & Ziva made its bow this Thursday on Paramount+. What is life (and love) like these days for the titular twosome, played by franchise vets Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo? And what heartbreaking twist derailed their emotional reunion back in 2020?
Following an incredible #Tiva recap montage -- complete with years and even a recreated scene or two -- NCIS: Tony & Ziva kicks off at the site of a wedding, where Ziva the bride (or "bride") takes a tuxedoed Tony's breath away at first glance. Ziva pulls an ornate veil over her head, then marches down a church aisle toward Maximilian Osinski's yet-to-be-introduced character, Boris. Tony meanwhile is hiding off to the side, gun at the ready, as he eyeballs a female wedding guest (who also has a pistol handy).
We cut to the present day, where that same mystery woman is busy surreptitiously draining 240 million Euros from a bank account. Claudette -- the CTO at Tony's company, Salus Mondiale Security Services -- gets wind of the robbery and alerts Tony. With only 17 minutes left until the account is completely drained, Tony takes Claudette on a wild car chase, with local cops on their tail, to the breached bank. Claudette is able to halt the theft about halfway through, unaware that the mystery woman is hiding behind her with a gun, ready to take her out -- until the cops enter the room. Claudette clocks and grabs a strange thumb drive that had been inserted into the workstation.
Later, Tony updates Interpol agents Henry and Jonah, as it was an Interpol account, protected by Salus Mondiale, that had been raided. He explains that the thumb drive they discovered, "9.4," is a "ninth evolution mini computer. Interpol refuses to take custody of 9.4, and instead leaves Salus Mondiale to safeguard the powerful gizmo and track down the top suspect in its creation, an elite coder named Boris.
We next catch up with Ziva, who is successfully running a language school for the children of French embassy staffers. When a truck backfires on the street outside her office, a colleague is spooked, but Ziva stays perfectly calm -- a moment that gains added importance soon enough.
Ziva is next seen in a park, watching on her laptop a home video of her reunion with Tony and daughter Tali on Jan. 18, 2020. "You're crying," Ziva remarks as she lays eyes on Tony. "So are you, on the inside," he replies. "Yep, well, we goddamn deserve it," Ziva says of the long-delayed reunion. "We sure goddamn do," Tony affirms.
Tony arrives at the park and sits next to Ziva, and they watch Tali playing football (soccer) nearby. Ziva says that she is thinking about sharing the reunion video again with her therapist. Dr. Lang. As she gets up to leave, she asks Tony to have Tali "back to your place by 2 pm," so that Sophie the nanny can take the tyke to tae kwon do.
Those two little words, your place, offer a first big hint as to the sometime-couple's current status.
At Dr. Lang's, Ziva plays the rest of the home video, and we see that as a happily reunited Ziva and Tali headed across the tarmac outside, a large canister toppled over with a loud bang. Ziva, though, heard gunshot, immediately grabbed for her sidearm and started frantically aiming for an assailant who wasn't there. With nearby MPs training their guns on her, Ziva laid down her weapon and sprawled across the blacktop, looking up at a confused Tali. It was in that moment, Ziva tells Lang, that she realized she "might need some therapy" to address her PTSD from years of living on the run.
Dr. Lang continues their session by inviting Ziva to take inventory of her life, including Tali ("couldn't be better"), the school ("booming"), and Tony ("not bad" and a "wonderful father," but at times a bit of a "child"). Ziva then recounts their ongoing run as a couple as "on-again, kind-of again, and where we are now, never again."
Returning to Salus Mondiale, Tony finds a police "lieutenant" waiting for him with a pair of "officers," though it becomes instantly clear this man is not what he says he is. He has Tony take him to the safe where 9.4 is kept, using his phone's live surveillance video of Tali and Sophie as leverage. Tony uses his hidden comms to secretly alert Claudette to the situation and have her tag in Ziva. Ziva's session with Lang is interrupted by Claudette's encrypted alert, which translates to "No Country Is Safe" (NCIS). Ziva shows Lang the livestream of Tali and Sophie, and he recognizes the Champs de Elysees bistro they are walking past. Ziva darts out and races on foot to the location, while Sophie herself gets an alert from Claudette and calmly tells Tali, "We need to run."
By this point, Tony has opened the safe and taken out 9.4, but not before attaching to it a small silicone tracker. He asks the "lieutenant" to show him Tali is safe one more time, then uses the distraction to grab his gun back from the man. Tony then warns the man he is about to see a "Jewish mother" in action, as Ziva catches up with Tali and Sophie and takes down the goons tailing them.
Convening at Ziva's house to raid her leveled-up "cookie jar," Tony suspects that someone they know is involved in the stealing of 9.4. He instructs Claudette to shut down their office, hole up at a hotel and track down Boris, who may be the only one who can stop the next attack once 9.4 is again deployed. Tony and Ziva take Tali aside to explain that Sophie (who is "great at a lot of things," which she learned from serving "the government") is going to take her away for a bit, and Tali is to "do exactly as she says, even if you don't exactly know why."
Returning to the topic of the fox in their henhouse, Tony asks Ziva if she is still a "good shot." He then arranges a meet-up with Henry, who advises #Tiva to "come in" or be brought in by Interpol's new "search and sanctions" team dubbed... The Section. Tony asks for Henry's phone; when he refuses, a hidden Ziva startles him with a warning shot. When he takes his phone out and tries to place a call, she squeezes off a second shot. Henry then surrenders his phone, and Tony tosses it into the air for Ziva to blast to pieces. "Good talk," Tony says as he and Ziva slip away unbothered.
That night over a low-key, candlelit dinner, Ziva laments, "I promised myself I wouldn't abandon [Tali] again," as she did to fake her death when their daughter was but two years old. Tony recalls a scrapped Disneyland Paris trip, where they explained to Tali, "It wasn't a promise, it was a plan -- and plans change, and it's no one's fault." He further reassures his ex, "Tali couldn't ask for better mother." Come morning, the tracker Tony placed on 9.4 pings -- at a hospital. Tony and Ziva race to the scene, finding the place crippled by a power outage followed by a ransom request for 115 million Euros. In a reversal of roles, Tony puts himself in charge of "kicking ass" (since only he knows what the "lieutenant" looks like), while Ziva leans on the hospital brass to pay the ransom by the deadline. Just in case.
Once the "lieutenant" sees the ransom is paid, he removes 9.4 from a hospital server, just as Tony gets the jump on him. Alas, the mystery woman from the wedding in turns get the jump on Tony! "Your daughter was just under surveillance" and not being threatened, "until you unleashed Ziva," the woman explains. Tony wonders aloud, "Have we met?" and the woman winks back, "What an excellent question,..." before leaving.
Tony updates Claudette on 9.4's ability to do multiple nefarious things; she in turn informs him that the 150 million Euros stolen from Interpol just got deposited into their corporate account! Tony and Zive take off, eluding Henry and the Interpol agents storming the hospital. Tony phones Henry to note how obvious it is they're being framed, but Henry points out the many lines Tony and Ziva have crossed just that day. Plus, the stolen money has now been transferred out of the Salus Mondiale account. "I have to follow the facts," Henry says, "so I'm issuing a Red Notice," making his friends "fair game for The Section."
Claudette tracks groom-to-be Boris to a house in Genoa. Confronted about 9.4 by an arriving #Tiva, he shrugs, "It was just a job, I didn't even know what it was for." Boris says he dealt face-to-face only with a "mean, scary woman," adding: "If you fight this lady, you'll lose." We then see the mystery woman aka Martine enter Henry's Interpol office and sit down, asking, "How bad is it, sir?"