Tonight on CBS NCIS: airs with an all-new Tuesday, April 21, 2026, season 23 episode 17 called, “Reboot” and we have your weekly NCIS recap below.
In tonight’s NCIS season 23 episode 17, “Reboot” as per the CBS synopsis, “A Navy lieutenant resurfaces a year after her plane vanished with a story that doesn’t quite add up.”
So make sure to bookmark this spot and come back between 8:00 PM – 9:00 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!
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On tonight’s NCIS episode, an innocent plumber walked into a hostage situation. He was called to the home of a nice family. The sink in their bathroom was messed up and it was made worse by the father trying to fix it himself. The kindly plumber came in to fix the problem. He did just that.
The problems didn’t arrive until he was trying to leave and he called out to the woman of the house to tell her he was done. He heard nothing back. He then moved to the living room where he found the mother and two kids tied up. He also got knocked out from someone behind him who had a gun.
Whatever happened at that house was a direct connection to what happened at NCIS. Kasie was up at one in the morning on a Sunday night rebooting the system’s computers. They would be offline for two hours total. It’s why she chose so late in the night.
She thought nothing would interrupt it, but she didn’t account for a possible terrorist attack. Someone broke into NCIS’s headquarters
. They wanted access to the building and somehow they knew the system was down. It was a secret that Kasie was supposed to keep to herself.
Sure, people at NCIS seemed to know about it. Parker stopped by with treats. Jimmy ran up from Autopsy. They knew Kasie too well not to know the truth and it wasn’t long into the reboot before one of the tech trolls disappeared. The person that broke in had killed one of the tech trolls working with Kasie.
Kasie was given trolls from four separate department. They were all difficult. Kasie said that was to be expected from a group of socially awkward malcontents. It’s also why she didn’t think any of them killed Daryl.
Darly was killed barely a minute into the reboot. He was struck from behind. Much like how the plumber went down. The difference being that Daryl was never getting back up. He was killed and Parker demanded to know why. He also found out someone moved his yoga mat from Ducky’s.
He went there with Jimmy and they ran into one of the maintenance workers. His name is Tommy. They all said they heard noises from that floor. Two out of the three thought it was the resident ghost they called Henry.
Parker was naturally skeptical of a ghost. He checked the multi-purpose room. He ended up finding a very much alive Sam Hanna. Sam was in town for a few hours because his connecting flight got delayed. He could’ve gone to a hotel only he decided to be cheap. He was going to sleep on the couch for free when he was found.
Sam had no idea about the reboot. Or that it was happening that night. Parker needed a partner to investigate and Sam was his best bet. He informed him about a dead Daryl. He also got his assistance in interviewing the other trolls.
Kasie was upset by another person being there. This secret was less of a secret than she thought. It was also getting harder to maintain the reboot because a blackout had occurred. The blackout happened after the interviews. The other trolls didn’t really know Daryl that well. Except for Harold.
He said he went to school with Daryl. He just forgot where it was. He didn’t know if it happened at Penn or Cornell. Sam thought that was odd and he asked him after the blackout to tell the truth. It turns out Harold’s real name is Frank.
Frank went to UPenn with Daryl until he got kicked out for hacking the mainframe. He wanted to change his final grade. He then changed his name and got his degree at Cornell. He hides the fact he was ever Frank because the job of a tech troll was very competitive.
They wouldn’t have hired him if they knew the truth about his past. Frank was still under the illusion that Daryl just had food poisoning. Like Kasie said. She told them it wasn’t the donuts that Parker brought in. It was some bad sushi.
The tech trolls all thought Daryl was still alive getting checked out by the doctor. Kasie was right when she said none of them did this. The person responsible abducted the family to force Tommy into plugging a flash drive into Kasie’s laptop. He never got to complete his task because Jimmy then the others all interrupted him.
Tommy said they threatened to kill his family. They rescued his family. They even saved the plumber that got tied up. They had to arrest Tommy for Daryl’s murder and everyone thought they saved the day.
They were all wrong because Kasie only realized afterwards that someone stole the Edna program from her laptop – they got what they wanted. This was never about access to the mainframe.
THE END!