Tonight on CBS NCIS: Sydney airs with an all-new Tuesday, March 10, 2026, season 3 episode 10 called, “Van Life” and we have your weekly NCIS: Sydney recap below.
In tonight’s NCIS season 3 episode 10, “Van Life” as per the CBS synopsis, “Mackey is enlisted to run a secret solo investigation into the disappearance of her boss’ son and his girlfriend.”
So make sure to bookmark this spot and come back between 10:00 PM – 11:00 PM ET for our NCIS Sydney recap. While you wait for the recap make sure to check out all our NCIS recaps, spoilers, news & more, right here!
Tonight’s NCIS: Sydney Recap begins now – Refresh Page often to get the most current updates!
In tonight’s NCIS Sydney episode, there was blood found on a bedsheet in the Royal National Park in Sydney. The sheet was being air-dried.
It was out behind a parked RV and it wasn’t there when one second before it suddenly appeared. The blood indicated someone was in trouble, but NCIS didn’t get involved at first.
They were stuck in an HR Seminar. Doc Rosey was smart enough to pretend he walked into the wrong building when he saw it in progress. Mackey was meeting with her boss. His son was missing. Miles Carter was on a surfing vacation in the area.
Miles was supposed to meet up with his parents at their hotel. They flew in for his twenty-first birthday. He never showed up nor did he call. It was a big birthday. His mom was worried that he ghosted him and she only became more worried once she failed to get into contact with him.
His dad felt differently or so he claimed at the time. He thought the kid probably didn’t know what month it was much less remember it was his birthday. NCIS Special Agent Ken Carter would’ve ignored it if it hadn’t been for his wife. His wife wanted answers and she wanted them now.
Carter didn’t want to open an official investigation. He was afraid of nepotism talk. He instead privately reached out to Mackey and asked her if she could locate Miles. Again, the dad claimed he wasn’t worried. Mackey was told to investigate the matter on her own to keep it off the books.
She would’ve done so if JD hadn’t tracked her down. He wanted a reason to get out of the HR Seminar and he knew Mackey was lying when she said she was at the dentist. He sought out Mackey. He noticed that Carter was leaving the same time as her. He wanted in.
JD didn’t care what it was as long as he didn’t have to speak to Janelle from HR. He and Mackey went to Miles’s last known location. He was doing the van life thing with his girlfriend, Sophie Palmer. They met six months ago. They’ve been living out of her van. She writes a blog about van life.
They last posted from a beach. Mackey went there with JD. They found the man with blood on his clothesline. He didn’t care about the blood left behind. He cared that someone stole his favorite shirt.
They left behind a shirt with blood on it. It was Miles’s shirt. He wore it in the last photo with Sophie. The man who reported it said he spotted it down closer to the beach when he went looking for his shirt. They went there. They followed a blood trail. They found Sophie’s van with a very dead Sophie inside of it.
There was no sign of Miles. They had to report the scene. The team was happy to escape Janelle as well. They showed up and they started investigating. It became clear that this case was going to be problematic.
They were investigating the boss’s son. Either Miles was attacked by a third party or Miles killed his girlfriend. There were drugs found inside of the van. It turns out that Miles had a drug problem back in the States. Something his father left out when he reported his son missing because he was secretly worried that Miles had relapsed.
Carter was asked about that after they found Sophie’s body and he said that Miles needed to change high schools because he was running with a bad crowd. He then got arrested in college for selling weed. He got a DUI.
His father couldn’t just change schools for him again. He told him to take time off. He thought traveling would help him get his head right. Only Carter never mentioned what happened in Bali to NCIS.
They had to find out about it on their own. They found out from Sophie’s mom that Sophie and Miles were almost arrested by Indonesian police because drugs were found at their hostel. Carter pulled some strings to get the young couple out of there. Carter didn’t mention that as well. There was a lot he was keeping from Mackey. He’d told her nothing but lies.
Mackey finally had enough. She put out a BOLO for Miles. Blue called her to tell her there’s been a hit. Miles was last seen entering his parents’ hotel a few minutes ago.
Mackey and JD arrested him. They brought him in for questioning. It got very testy with Carter. He claimed his son had just gotten there before they arrived. He also said he wanted this case to be done by the book because he’s had experience with a DEA Agent who asked him to pull a favor for him with his son who got caught on a drug charge.
His little story didn’t stop Carter from trying to interfere with his son’s case. Miles said that he watched the sunrise with Sophie and that he doesn’t remember anything else until waking up five hours later. By then, Sophie was dead. They asked him if he took drugs. They told him they found drugs in the van.
He swore it wasn’t his or Sophie’s. She didn’t do drugs. The situation in Bali apparently scared him straight. His claim of not knowing what happened for five hours proved to be true because Doc found a sedative in his urine from when he wet himself. He really was knocked out.
Other than that there was no drugs found in his system. Miles was clean now. The same goes for Sophie. It was someone else who killed her and they wanted Miles to take the fall. Miles didn’t have enemies.
His father however has plenty of them. Carter heard that his son was drugged and he got ahead of the investigation. He talked to Blue without the others knowing. He asked for everyone who was at the beach the day Sophie’s body was found. He recognized one of the faces as being his old partner in the DEA.
DEA Special Agent Louis Clifford had a son who got arrested for drugs. He went to Carter for help and Carter reported the incident. He got Clifford in trouble over obstruction. Clifford’s son would go on to die in prison while there on remand. Clifford blamed Carter for his son’s death so he wanted to destroy him by destroying what he loved the most – his son.
Carter headed towards Clifford’s location right as the rest of NCIS were figuring out what happened. They spoke to Blue. They ran facial rec on people at the scene until they identified Clifford. And that’s when they remembered Carter’s story about his DEA partner.
Naturally, Carter even lied there because he never said he was the one that arrested Clifford’s son. The man hasn’t told the full truth since he kicked off this investigation with a search of his son. He was the reason the young man was put back into prison and killed. It makes sense that Clifford wanted revenge.
NCIS tracked down both men before Carter did something he couldn’t take back. Not that he did. Carter had several chances to kill Clifford and he never took them. He even saved Clifford’s life at one point when they both went over the railing.
Clifford was arrested for Sophie’s murder. Miles was released and reunited with his parents. It was only then that Carter finally explained what happened in Bali. He did pull some strings.
He did it because once again his son was hanging with the wrong crowd. He invited them back to the hostel. They brought their drugs and were already under investigation when they all got arrested. The whole thing forced Miles to grow up. And Carter said he’d make the same decisions if he had to do it all over again.
HR’s decision also came through. Janelle felt they needed more team-building exercises and that they had to self-report. Mackey claimed they were going bowling when truthfully they were grabbing beer.
THE END!
