Tonight on CBS NCIS: Sydney airs with an all-new Tuesday, October 14, 2025, season 3 episode 1 called, “Gut Instinct” and we have your weekly NCIS: Sydney recap below.
In tonight’s NCIS season 3 episode 1, “Sting in the Tail” as per the CBS synopsis, “The discovery of two missing U.S. Navy aviators adrift in the Coral Sea leads the team to expose a sinister terrorist plot, on the third season premiere of NCIS: SYDNEY.”
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Tonight’s NCIS: Sydney Recap begins now – Refresh Page often to get the most current updates!
In tonight’s NCIS:Sydney episode, Bluebird was keeping a secret from her team. She only ever confessed to Doc Roy some of the truth. Her name is fake. She doesn’t know her actual birthday. She was running from people and unfortunately they found her on last season’s finale. Yet, Blue didn’t turn to her team for help.
She chose to resign. She disappeared from the team’s lives. She never gave them an explanation. She sent a video and that was it. She also wasn’t returning Doc’s calls. She was gone and APD felt it was time for a full security audit. They brought in a new guy to check NCIS’s offices. He was the worst.
The first thing he did was lock the doors. He officially put on a security lock on the doors. NCIS had to wait until someone inside allowed them in. The Australians all hated it.
DeShawn at least wanted to give him a chance. Mackey never got the chance that first day because she was locked out of the building and there was no point in letting her in because the helicopter was taking them offsite. Work took precedent like it always does. There were two US Navy flyboys found on a ship full of immigrants heading towards Australia.
The men claimed they escaped. They said they were on a flying mission. Their plane went down. They got picked up by people and they were held captive in a jungle for what they estimated was five to six weeks. Lt. Paul Price was spiking a fever. Both of their memories were hazy about everything.
The Navy was itching to get them back because them being alive was a miracle. They weren’t gone six weeks. They were gone six years. They were held captive for six years by suspected Filipino terrorists.
Daniels was in better condition. He was quickly handed over to the Navy. Price found himself stuck with Doc. They did a physical. Price has been tortured. There’s a reason to believe that his memory loss was trauma induced. Daniels didn’t really recall those six years either. Their story about escaping even had some plot holes.
The Navy having Daniels was fine because they still had Price to question. Mackey allowed Price’s wife to tell him that he was missing for six years. It was a shock to the system because he left on his mission when she was pregnant and now he was the father of a nearly six year old girl.
Then Price snapped. He began shaking Mackey’s hand. He kept telling her it was a honor to meet her. They had to subdue him. It was actually the new guy that figured out what caused the issue. He figured it out around the same time that the team had found the freight that the Navy boys escaped from. Only it hadn’t been an escape at all. The freighter had been following the small fishing boat for a few days before the boys “escaped” and it then went on to travel to Sydney. It couldn’t be a coincidence.
Mackey thought Price and Daniels were lying about their escape. She thought they were both wrong. They went to the freighter and the men onboard blew themselves up in suicide bomber style. One of them got away. The one that got away was Bavari Salazar. He was a Filipino extremist. He was believed to have been killed and it turns out the joint American/Filipinos’ plan to take him out only destroyed his operation. Not the man himself. Salazar escaped. He kidnapped two American pilots. He did so because he wanted to use them.
It was like Mackey’s boss told her earlier. Those men were considered heroes for being held captive for six years and living to tell the tale. The Ambassador in the region couldn’t wait to meet them. Shake hands with them. The only thing holding her up was that she wanted to have the photo op with both men. Price’s fever stopped him from attending. It put off the meeting. Just not for long. The new guy was named Travis Riggs and he was sweeping the building for listening devices when Price had his episode.
Price was forced to respond to certain frequency because that’s what Salazar broke into both men. Both Price and Daniels have a bomb where their appendix should be. Travis helped Doc Roy learn the truth. The two of them then worked together to remove the device from Price’s intestines. They were almost too late to their conclusions because Daniels was already in place to meet the ambassador. She wasn’t just the ambassador. She used to oversee the Philippines. She was in charge of the mission that almost killed Salazar. All of this has been revenge for that.
Salazar snuck into the country to blow her up. NCIS tried to warn the Ambassador’s security team. They said they dealt with risk assessment all the time and couldn’t be wrong. Yet, it was NCIS that managed to find Salazar first. They found him and they shot him before he could detonate the bomb. Daniels will now have his own bomb removed. Price was reunited with his family. The new guy kinda helped saved the day. He earned Doc’s trust and he gave him an idea. Doc has been trying to contact Blue as a friend.
What he should have done was contacted her as a doctor claiming her test results were in and that’s exactly what he did.
Mackey meanwhile was avoiding therapy and so she chose to focus on helping JD with his dating profile.
THE END!