‘NCIS: Los Angeles’ season 8, episode 3 preview: A short-handed team faces the future

The premiere of “NCIS: Los Angeles” is coming your way on CBS Sunday night as a two-hour affair, and over the course of those episodes (we’ll have more on them later on) you’re going to see everything from a high-value target to a dangerous situation that could put one team member in grave danger.

So how are we going to follow up on all of that? We wanted to go ahead and give you some preliminary details right now on “The Queen’s Gambit,” which is the upcoming third episode of this season airing in just one week’s time. The synopsis below makes it pretty clear what the stakes are here, and at the same time, also why the team will be short-handed in trying to figure out a difficult case:

“The NCIS LA team investigates an abduction case while down two members, with Hetty being held in D.C. for questioning, and another still in the ICU following the mission in Syria.”

Will they remain short-handed forever? We presume that Daniela Ruah will be missing in action in some shape or form due to her real-life pregnancy (though they did a very good job of focusing the show around her leave last time), and we also presume that Hetty will be back with the team sooner rather than later unless the writers really are out to torment the fans. This will be the last episode before a temporary hiatus on October 9 (the schedule’s going to be a little wonky this fall thanks to the Presidential election and some other matters), so hopefully this is going to be a great hour to help tide us over.

If you are interested in getting some other news on “NCIS: Los Angeles” right now, head over to the link here! Meanwhile, sign up over here to score some other TV news on everything we cover, sent right over to you via our official CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: CBS.)