Tonight on CBS NCIS: ORIGINS returns with an all-new Monday, April 14, 2025, season 1 episode 16 called, “Bugs,” and we have your weekly NCIS: ORIGINS recap below.
In tonight’s NCIS: ORIGINS season 1 episode 16 called “Bugs,”as per the CBS synopsis, “TVera receives an unexpected call from Bugs, who claims he’s ready to answer more questions from prison after being identified as the sniper known as “Sandman.”
When she arrives, Bugs has suddenly changed his mind, prompting the team to reconsider the case and race against the clock to try and stop another tragedy.”
So make sure to bookmark this spot and come back between 10:00 PM – 11:00 PM ET for our NCIS: ORIGINS recap. While you wait for the recap make sure to check out all our NCIS recaps, spoilers, news & more, right here!
Tonight’s NCIS: ORIGINS Recap begins now – Refresh Page often to get the most current updates!
Vera Strickland lived a big life in a small apartment. She had two bathrooms. She used the second one as a makeshift office. She was kicking off a program about profiling serial killers and Jamison “Bugs” Boyd was the first one she ever got to study. Profiling up to that point had been an FBI thing. The FBI created an entire department of profilers. Vera wanted to do the same for NCIS. She was studying the killer known as “the Sandman”, but lines were getting blurred. Vera didn’t just study him. She also befriended him. He became attached to her company and Vera noticed it.
Vera tried to pull away. She tried to redefine the boundary between them. Bugs did his best to ignore that boundary. He wasn’t ready for the interviews to stop. He had to talk to her and he’s taken to calling her at her apartment. How he got her number was anyone’s guess. Vera should never have accepted his call or talked to him that night. She even told him she was thinking about him when he called. She was talking about the notes she was putting together on his persona as the Sandman. Bugs took it to mean something else.
He also begged her to come see him at the prison. He promised he’d be open with her. Bugs said he’d tell her everything she wanted to know this time if she came to see him and Vera fell for it. She got excited about it. She told Kowalski all about it. She was looking forward to interviewing Bugs again. The only thing she needed was the boss’s okay before she did so. She was waiting around for him when the rest of NCIS was got a robbery case. The case was so boring that Franks refused to take it.
Franks has been in an horrible mood since his wife left him. Gibbs tried to talk him into a meeting for veterans and he passed on it because he thought he was fine. He wasn’t. He was refusing to help. He was now refusing cases if they weren’t murders. He went back to the office. His team continued to investigate. Marine Reservist Wyatt Morten’s apartment was broken into. He doesn’t really care about the stuff. He cares about the photo. His father was also in the military. They never talked about the toll it took on either of them. And his father gave him a photo that conveyed more than words.
It was a reassurance that his father loved him. The man that broke in had stolen the photo. Morten wanted it back. He truly didn’t care about anything else. He wanted the photo back because it was a message from his dad. He was also wise enough to know the odds weren’t high that they’d get it back. Gibbs didn’t sugarcoat it to Morten either. Gibbs tried to convince him as well to go to a veterans meeting and Morten it down. He too worried about the photo to do anything else. The photo had been in his wallet. The thief grabbed that wallet. And he probably dumped it in a trash can the second he got money out of it.
The photo was of his father in his WWII uniform. Morten feared he’d never get it back. Gibbs took this case seriously only no one else did. Not at the office. They were all focused on the mystery Vera came back with. She got permission from her boss. She visited Bugs and he wouldn’t talk to her. He wouldn’t explain why he changed his mind. He told her to leave and so she did. Vera didn’t drop it when she got back at the office. She looked into anyone that may have talked to Bugs since she did the night before. She found out someone claiming to be John Smith had called him at the prison.
Somehow this person frightened Bugs into remaining silent. The question on Vera’s mind was how he found out about it. She only told people at NCIS. One of the chemists suggested that she was being spied on. She checked her home. It was in the clear. She checked NCIS and they found three listening devices. It had a wide range. It also put cases at risk. Franks and Wheeler suspected their old buddy Roger was responsible. Roger worked for NCIS until he had money problems. He sold out a little girl to a hitman. He stole money from evidence. He was willing to do anything for a buck.
Franks went to go talk to him at the prison. Roger said he’s done with lying. He has no reason to hide anything anymore. He’s in prison and he was telling the truth when he said he didn’t bug the office. Someone else did. It might be the John Smith that called Bugs. NCIS got access to Bugs’s prison call. He got a call from someone saying that they were family and that Bugs didn’t need to talk to Vera. It was slightly scary when the person mentioned wolves were coming only he didn’t threaten Bugs. The line about being family caught Vera’s attention.
Vera didn’t think Bugs had any family. His parents were dead. He has no siblings. He does have a cousin he pretended to be when he joined the army. The cousin was Herchel Boyd. They didn’t have much information on him. Vera dismissed him because he lived on the east coast. But someone claiming to be family had Bugs do all sorts of jobs for him. They called it missions. Bugs was told they had to take out Dustin Cruz. Bugs played a part in that and he didn’t kill in his girlfriend’s death. Someone else killed Melanie. Bugs took the blame because he felt at fault.
Melanie found out what he was up to. She found out he was working with a hitman. It was making her sick with worry. She started to medicate with drugs and then she overheard about Dustin Cruz. She knew he was the target. She tried to warn him. She crossed a line for Bugs’s partner. The partner killed her. He told Bugs to set the house on fire and he did. He even took the blame with a fake story because he didn’t want anyone looking for his partner. They saw each other as family. And Bugs didn’t want to betray that.
Bugs mentioned Operation Sundown. Gibbs had seen that before in the shredder. He was looking into it when Bugs was assassinated. Franks realized much too late that Bugs wasn’t the Sandman. He was the spotter. Snipers often work in pairs. One was the shooter. The other was the spotter. The real Sandman killer was still out there. He got access to the prison and he killed Bugs. All of which flew over Wheeler’s head because he got drunk. Wheeler’s son threw a party in a cemetery that got out of hand. He was now facing juvie and Wheeler didn’t know what to do about it.
Then to make matters worse, there were three bugs in his office that he thought Roger was behind. He personally hired Roger and so he got drunk after a bad day at the office. He was still drunk when they realized that the serial killer was still out there. And that the Sandman stole Morten’s wallet to get access to the prison.
THE END
