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Paramount’s 4-Part Crime Thriller Is Taking Over the World as Season Finale Looms

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One of NCIS‘s spin-offs is about to air its series finale, months after the premiere of its latest season. This action-drama franchise, which began in 2003, followed a similar premise: a close-knit team investigates crimes against the U.S. military. Since then, NCIS has spawned many titles set in different locations, and one of them went international.

NCIS: Sydney, the first Australian international spin-off of the NCIS franchise, launched in 2023, and is currently in its third season. The show follows two NCIS members, Michelle Mackey (Olivia Swann) and DeShawn Jackson (Sean Sagar), who team up with Australian Federal Police officers, Jim “JD” Dempsey (Todd Lasance), Evie Cooper (Tuuli Narkle), Bluebird Gleeson (Mavournee Hazel), and Roy Penrose (William McInnes) as they solve U.S. Navy-related crimes in the land down under, and, in Season 3, Antarctica. The third season premiered in October 2025, and its two-part finale is scheduled to air next week.

Recently, NCIS: Sydney returned to the global streaming charts, ranking at #10 on Paramount+ Top 10 TV Shows worldwide. The third season of NCIS: Sydney introduces a new plot line: The Collective, a group within the U.S. military involved in drug smuggling and tied to Mackey’s backstory of being court-martialed during her time in Afghanistan. Season 3 also introduced a new member of the NCIS x AFP team-up, Travis Riggs (aka: Trigger), played by Claude Jabbour. According to a plot synopsis for the Season 3 finale shared on Paramount’s press site, this military criminal group is back, and the FBI will be getting involved.

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Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz
Which Action Hero Would Be
Your Perfect Partner?

Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt

Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.

🎖️Rambo

🍸James Bond

🏺Indiana Jones

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🔧John McClane

🎭Ethan Hunt

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01

You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner?
The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.





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02

You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel?
How you get there is half the mission.





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03

You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do?
This is when you find out what someone is really made of.





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04

The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest?
Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.





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05

How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission?
Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.





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06

Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them?
The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.





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07

Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do?
Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.





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08

What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace?
A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.





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09

Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with?
No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.





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10

It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now?
The last question is the most honest one.





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Your Partner Has Been Assigned
Your Perfect Partner Is…

Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.

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Rambo

Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.

James Bond

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Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.

Indiana Jones

Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.

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John McClane

Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.

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Ethan Hunt

Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.

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Is ‘NCIS: Sydney’ Worth Watching?

When NCIS: Sydney debuted, it was reported to be the “most-streamed CBS network premiere ever on Paramount+,” with nearly 10 million views in November 2023. While Seasons 2 and 3 don’t have Rotten Tomatoes scores, Season 1 was well received by critics, earning a 73% rating, while audiences gave it a low 33% rating. On IMDb, NCIS: Sydney received a 6.2-star rating, with each Season maintaining similar episode scores; the highest-rated episode by far was Season 3, episodes 12 and 13, tied at 8.4 stars. Following its success, a fourth season has been greenlit.

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Australian critics note that this Australian spin-off doesn’t plan to change an established formula that has lasted for decades, nor will it do anything new to a long-running TV series. However, they appreciated that it added some Australian references to the mix and praised the Australian leads, noting that both Lasance and Swann have “decent chemistry.”

All three seasons of NCIS: Sydney are available to stream on Paramount+. New episodes air every Friday on CBS.

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Release Date

November 10, 2023

Network
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Paramount+

Showrunner

Morgan O’Neill

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Directors

Jennifer Leacey, Shawn Seet

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Writers

Andrew Anastasios, James Cripps, Morgan O’Neill

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  • Olivia Swann

    Michelle Mackey

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  • Todd Lasance

    Jim ‘JD’ Dempsey

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