Warning: SPOILERS for the NCIS episode “Heaven and Nature” are ahead!
Well, NCIS fans, “Heaven and Nature,” a.k.a. the Season 23 midseason finale, has aired, and with it brings an end to the mysteries of the little girl named Lily and the true circumstances behind how Alden Parker’s mother, Eleanor, died. These plot threads stretch back to when Parker started hallucinating Lily in the NCIS Season 21 finale, and the show has now tied them altogether before going on break, with Season 23 resuming on the 2026 TV schedule in a few months.
And yet, as great as it was for Parker to finally get closure on these fronts, these answers we got didn’t shock me nearly as much as the midseason finale’s ending twist. A longtime NCIS favorite is back in the mix, but before I get into that, let’s talk about everything Parker discovered about his past in “Heaven and Nature.” Buckle up, folks, because this is a doozy.
What Really Happened To Parker’s Mom
After Jimmy Palmer told Alden Parker that he suspected Eleanor Parker had actually been murdered, Parker eventually gave Jimmy permission to exhume her body to uncover the truth. While Jimmy did indeed confirm that theory, there’s just one problem: Kasie discovered through DNA testing that the woman he was examining was not Parker’s mother. Meaning, because this mystery woman was actually the one at the scene of the drunk driving crash in 1972, that left the whereabouts of Parker’s mother unknown.
In order to find some answers, Parker and Jessica Knight tracked down the Illinois state trooper who filed the accident report for the car crash, Lester Burm. Unfortunately for them, Lester couldn’t remember much about what happened that night due to his memory issues… or at least, that’s how it seemed at first. More on that soon.
Meanwhile, Jimmy and Kasie used a computer program to build a face off the skull of the mystery woman. With Knight’s help, they added green eyes to the recreation, and Knight observed how the model of this woman’s face resembled the picture of Lester Burm’s wife that she saw in his trailer. Then came another curveball: the DNA of this woman was a 48% match for the woman who left the lipstick on the wine glass in Parker’s apartment when she visited his father, Roman, shortly before he was murdered by Carla Marino.
Stick with me, this gets even weirder and twisty. It turns out that Lester Burm’s wife, Donna, who died several years earlier, was not the same green-eyed woman he identified as his wife in the aforementioned picture. This woman was his first wife, Judy, whom Lester kept secret on his official records. Not only that, Lester’s picture was actually a cropped version of the original, with that one showing him and Judy next to their daughter… Lily. Is your mind blown yet?
Lester claimed that Judy took Lily, now named Nellie, when she left Lester, and he’s been looking for his daughter ever since. However, the truth was far more sinister, and Parker and Knight learned this they tracked down “Penelope Johnson” to Wilmington. Parker finally reunited with Lily, as well as met her granddaughter Eleanor, who just like Lily did at her age.
And now we come to the full scope of what happened. Parker and Lily would have playdates together as kids while his mother gave her mother. One day, Eleanor Parker learned that Judy was being abused by Lester Burm, and since it wasn’t safe to for these women to go to the police back then given Lester’s position, they instead devised a plan to hide Judy and Lily at the home of Eleanor’s second cousin in Pittsburgh.
Unfortunately, Lester figured out what was happening, and while Eleanor and Judy were briefly separated, he took Lily with him to work. After dropping Parker off at home with Roman (who had no idea what was going on), the women got in Eleanor’s car to fetch Lily. Lester forced them off the road, and while Eleanor was able to escape, Lester used the car crash as cover to kill Judy. Eleanor was then able to secretly loop back and get Lily from the car crash site, but Lester found the motel where they were staying. He dragged Eleanor away, but Lily managed to stay hidden.
The good news is that Connie, the second cousin, found Lily, allowing her to remain hidden from Lester ever since. But there was just one mystery left: where was Eleanor Parker? Well, her son decided to take matters into his own hands and use more forceful methods to jog Lester’s memory in an NCIS interrogation room with the security camera disabled. The man, who’d feigned his cognitive issues, eventually gave in and revealed that he dumped Eleanor’s body and her car into a small pond outside of Toledo, Ohio.
Who Returned At The End Of The NCIS Season 23 Midseason Finale
Phew, that was a lot! All this would have been more than enough to give NCIS fans before the holiday break, but there was one more surprise left in store. During Season 23, Jessica Knight has been training for NCIS Elite, and during the proper funeral for Eleanor Parker held at the end of “Heaven and Nature,” Director Leon Vance called her to give her her first assignment. Knight’s target: none other than Emily Wickersham’s Eleanor Bishop, whom we then see is discreetly watching the funeral from afar.
I’m sorry, what? While I’d been hoping in late October that Wickersham might return to NCIS after she was seen hanging out with NCIS: Origins showrunner David J. North, I didn’t expect it to happen like this! The actress departed the flagship series in the Season 18 finale, with Bishop quitting NCIS and torching her reputation as part of a long-term undercover operation she agreed to go on for Odette Malone, an old contact of Ziva David’s. This reveal in “Heaven and Nature” is giving off the same kind of vibes as when Ziva resurfaced in the Season 16 finale.
So where do we go from here? Are we finally going to learn the details of this mission? What’s Bishop been doing all this time? What does NCIS Elite want with her? Will Bishop and Nick Torres finally reunite? I’m reeling from this twist, but as I mentioned earlier, we have to wait a few months for answers. Like NCIS: Origins and NCIS: Sydney, NCIS will return on Tuesday, February 24.
