NCIS: Los Angeles season 9 premiere: Is Linda Hunt leaving as Hetty?

Is Linda Hunt’s Hetty leaving NCIS: Los Angeles season 9? There are certainly moments during the premiere that make you wonder and a little scared if you are a big Hetty fan! She was missing during the first part of the premiere, and while she was still listed in the regular cast, we were still worried. After all, we’re living within a world now where Amy Carlson left Blue Bloods and almost nobody knew about it at all until halfway through the first episode this past Friday.

Ultimately, we were very worried about Hetty through all of this, but one thing over the course of the episode tonight gave us hope: CBS had hyped up her disappearance for weeks before the premiere. It’d be especially cruel if the show was to do this and then pull the rug out from under us if she was really gone. Our feeling was that this was another covert operation on her part, so covert that she couldn’t tell anyone about it in advance … but, our feelings have been wrong before, and the show did a great job scaring the every loving day lights out of us.

So what’s going on here with Hetty? CarterMatt has answers for you!

What was probably the most interesting thing about this episode is that NCIS: Los Angeles started off by giving you a small tease of this storyline, but then left it as the writers addressed their new mission dealing with a possible North Korean threat.

Warning: Spoilers from the end of tonight’s episode ahead…

In the closing minutes, the producers finally revealed the good news: NCIS: Los Angeles is not going the way of Blue Bloods and Linda Reagan when it comes to Hetty. She is still very much alive, she’s not leaving the show, and she is off on a super-secret mission in Vietnam and it’s one that could have ties to her past many decades before. She slipped into the country without even going through customs.

Now that we know for sure that Hunt is sticking around on the series, there are obviously some other big questions worth asking. For example, what’s the role of Hetty going to be with the team in the weeks ahead, and why did she need to go this off the grid in order to make it happen? Also, she’s showing a real habit for going rogue and doing her own thing, and she’s supposed to be the leader of the team, so how is everyone going to feel about this latest disappearance? We have to imagine that unless she explains herself well, there will be frustrated faces when she returns.

Do you wan to see Linda Hunt around NCIS: Los Angeles in the long run? Be sure to share your thoughts in the comments!

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