NCIS: Hawaii Casts Alex Tarrant, Enver Gjokaj


The NCIS franchise is growing with NCIS: Hawaii being the latest installment in the franchise that originated back in 1995 with JAG. NCIS: Hawaii premiering on CBS this fall will follow the franchise’s first-ever female lead Special Agent Jane Tennant (Vanessa Lachey) as she leads the NCIS Pearl Harbor Office, her team balancing duty to family and country, investigating high-stakes crimes involving military personnel, national security and the mysteries of the island itself. And now two new additions have been made to the cast with Alex Tarrant and Enver Gjokaj signing onto the series. 

Tarrant will star as Kai who according to Variety:

“Kai provides the team with a unique superpower: he can blend into any part of the islands. That’s because he’s a local. But while he grew up riding twenty-footers and serenading the wahine with his ‘uke, cultivating a charm that still oozes from every part of him, he’s spent most of his adult life running away from his home. Now returned to Hawai‘i as an NCIS agent to tend to his sick father, he struggles to reconcile his past as he navigates the high-stakes crimes on the islands he knows so intimately.”

 

 

I’m unfamiliar with Tarrant’s work but his character sounds like a compelling one that would be organic to the DNA of the show with part of its theme being telling stories central to the land of Hawaii with Kai being a local kid. The mysterious past Kai will have to work through along with his potential personal issues his sick father that drove him away from home could make for some engaging drama in between solving mysteries or even as his internal motivation for solving crimes and catching bad guys on the island of Hawaii with whatever compelling inciting incident brings him back home. 

 


According to Variety Gjokaj will star as Navy Captain Joe Milius:

“A high-ranking commander of Pacific Fleet who arrives when a top-secret experimental aircraft crashes into a cliff, killing the pilot. He maintains that it was an accident – intent on protecting the honor of the dead officer. While Milius clashes with Tennant (Lachey) and is resistant to her taking control of the crash investigation, he can’t help but respect her ability as a leader.”

 

 

To me, it sounds like Captain Milius’s crash investigation will be the high-scale plot of the pilot episode with the worlds of NCIS and the Pacific Fleet colliding in the same vein as the worlds of NCIS and the Secret Service on Air Force One with Agent Catilin Todd in the pilot episode of NCIS. Gjokaj is a terrific actor as I am familiar with his work from Agent Carter where he played SHIELD Agent Daniel Sousa opposite Haley Atwell as Peggy Carter. There he exuded a great everyman charm which could translate well on the NCIS Pearl Harbor team as Captain Milius comes into conflict with Tennant. Milius’s role as a Captain in the Pacific Fleet could draw comparisons in terms of storytelling feel to Captain Kirk from Star Trek with Milius being the unflappable commander in charge dealing with outsiders on his ship in the form of NCIS but in a more grounded realistic NCIS fashion with perhaps Gjokaj’s character being more similar to his character from Agent Carter who’s character rose to field commander status in the show’s second season with Captain Milius potentially being depicted as an likable everyman in the same vein as Jack Ryan from The Hunt for Red October. Tennant may find Milius to be an effective and brilliant Fleet Captain but at the same time down to earth and relatable and she may decide to drop the brute force pretense she may put up with other male Navy commanders who don’t take her seriously as a woman or have too much of an ego themselves in contrast to Milius’s brave and heroic dogged everyman with a strong desire to see justice through to the end. And to that end I have a strong suspicion that just like the NCIS pilot episode ended with Caitlin Todd resigning from the Secret Service and joining NCIS to work for Gibbs a leader she grew to admire after working an action-packed investigation with him the same will be true here in the pilot episode of NCIS: Hawaii as Milius will work a joint-investigation full of intrigue and conflict with Tennant and during the course of the episode grow to respect and admire the formidable Tennant and by the end of the pilot he will for some strong motivational character-based reason resign his commission with the Navy and join NCIS to work for Tennant or maybe he’ll even keep his commission and join the reserves and join NCIS as an Special Agent charting a new chapter in his life solving crimes on the island of Hawaii. 

 

 

Regardless, I’m excited to see what happens moving forward and with Vanessa Lachey leading the cast as Tennant, and with these new exciting casting additions including Gjokaj this show is shaping up to be one with potentially a lot of dimensions that will be able to tell a new story within the NCIS universe with potential inspirational influence in cinematic classics such as The Hunt for Red October just like Air Force One served as inspiration for the beginning of the original NCIS and with that kind of level of thoughtful and high-octane storytelling I can’t wait to check out the next chapter in the NCIS franchise, NCIS: Hawaii premiering on CBS this fall airing on Monday nights at 10:00 p.m. with season 19 of NCIS serving as its lead-in. 

 




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