Tonight on CBS NCIS: Sydney airs with an all-new Tuesday, March 3, 2026, season 3 episode 9 called, “South of Nowhere” and we have your weekly NCIS: Sydney recap below.
In tonight’s NCIS season 3 episode 9, “South of Nowhere” as per the CBS synopsis, “he team races to an Antarctica research base to investigate why a climate scientist killed a colleague on the eve of polar night – and make it out before their plane engine freezes and they’re trapped in darkness for six months.”
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!
Australia was a lot closer to the Antarctica than people gave it credit for. NCIS found out about it after they got deployed following a murder. A US Navy climatologist killed her colleague. It wasn’t a mere accusation. It was done in a room full of witnesses. The witnesses as well as her fellow scientists are made up of an international league and that meant they came from all around the world to study there. They sacrificed a lot. They had to pass a psych eval. They wouldn’t risk their hard work getting dismissed much less going on a killing spree. Yet, that’s what this climatologist was accused of doing.
Dr. Cohen didn’t just stop with one guy. She killed everyone in the room. Most of her colleagues were fine at first after the first one died and they reported the incident to their boss. It’s why NCIS was specifically chosen. They were chosen to deal with a rogue Navy scientist. NCIS weren’t expecting that the scientist somehow escaped and killed everyone. It was their initial theory when they found a room full of dead people. They assumed Cohen killed everyone. They were wrong because Doc Rosey found something amiss.
Doc said that most of the people were all killed differently. It was as if there was a psychotic orgy. His words! Doc didn’t think one person did all that damage and he proved to be right when they found Cohen’s body. She was still detained when she died. She never escaped to kill them. They merely killed each other. Doc took blood samples from all the victims. He wanted to know if it was a virus that did it. They found who they believed to be the sole survivor. His name is Pavel Dubovskiy. Pavel said he saw everyone freak out after the first murder and he hid to stay safe.
They detained him until they could check the surveillance cameras.
Pavel was telling the truth. They all started to attack each other. Pavel hid while calling his girlfriend back in Minsk. They found the last missing scientist supposedly frozen to death. Only she wasn’t dead. She was frozen to the point of near death. Doc had to thaw her out to take a blood sample and by time she thawed – she was alive. Jenn gave them a run down. She said she set up the flare right after the first murder. She hid when things turned nasty. They asked her why she didn’t call and she said she didn’t have service.
So, how did Pavel call his alleged girlfriend? No sooner that they realized Pavel misled them that he trapped them in the medic bay. Pavel had originally told them that Jenn found something in the ice. She found a sample of a zombie virus that she broke and didn’t report. They sent the blood samples through to Blue back in Sydney. Blue said whatever it was it wasn’t in any current database. Pavel injected something in them that couldn’t be found. He might’ve been telling the truth about a zombie virus. He just withheld what else he found.
Pavel couldn’t have done all of this just for a virus that acted like super rabies. Jenn soon passed out because being frozen nearly to death didn’t stop the virus from affecting her. They were all still locked up. They would eventually die if he didn’t find a way to escape. Blue and Trigger came in handy. They gave them the idea to see off a fire. It automatically opened the doors. They were free to get back their guns from the gun safe. Doc took Jenn to the plane to wait for them. The rest had to hunt down Pavel.
Pavel was also armed. He got a shotgun right after he infected everyone through their Vitamin D shots. A shot he didn’t give himself by the way. Pavel had been planning this for a while. He tried to kill NCIS off before they could unlock safe and he was right to be worried. They got their weapons. Pavel was no match for them. They shot him. It was a shoulder wound. It allowed them to detain him. They then all got onboard before Polar Night could kick off. They essentially abandoned the naval station because they didn’t want to be stuck there for six months waiting for the sun.
They were airborne by time they realized they underestimated Pavel. Pavel managed to drug their pilot. The pilot began experiencing symptoms and they were crashing, but Mackey took over. Mackey was once a pilot. She therefore had enough training to take over. She got them back to Australia in one piece. Pavel nearly killed himself with that stunt. How did he plan to escape? Belarus was neighbors with Russia. Why he did all of this was also pretty easy to find because JD knew a little something about mining.
It turns out Pavel found a rare metal out there in the permafrost that was worth trillions. Russia would’ve paid him well if he allowed them to mine the place during. NCIS no longer cared because Pavel wasn’t their problem anymore. JD was worried about a text he got from a woman he’s dating. They met a month ago on the apps. She sent him a text with an eggplant that everyone else thought was innuendo. She later explained she really was asking him if he wanted to eat an eggplant dish. Mackey had a good laugh about that one.
Mackey also heard back on who put her on the Operative Ghost’s kill list – Rankin said it was them and that could be the United States or whoever tried to force him to work for them.
The End
