FBI: International returned for Season 4 in fall's 2024 TV schedule, but not to pick up precisely where last season left off like what happened previously when an explosion rocked the Fly Team HQ. In fact, the premiere was one big fresh start with the arrival of Chicago P.D. alum Jesse Lee Soffer as SSA Wes Mitchell. A fair amount of the premiere actually wasn't set in Europe at all, but in LA to set up Mitchell's arrival in Budapest. According to Soffer, the goal was to treat the episode "like a pilot," which makes me wonder: how much will Season 4 feel like a reboot?
A bit of a reset was inevitable after the departure of Luke Kleintank as SSA Scott Forrester, especially since he didn't get an on-screen sendoff. Still, I was so struck by how FBI: International's Season 4 premiere (which is available streaming now with a Paramount+ subscription) devoted so much time to what happened in LA to motivate Mitchell to join the Fly Team that I had to ask the new star about it.
After Jesse Lee Soffer confirmed that the Los Angeles sequences "cheated Budapest for LA" and commended "production design on a great job" of doubling the city in Hungary for California, he addressed the massive scale of the episode:
It was a huge episode. It's a new character coming on after three seasons of a show, so we kind of treated it like a pilot, and gave it a lot of time and a lot of action, and needed to do some backstory. Everybody dug in and and we got to work. It was a lot of fun.
FBI: International said goodbye to cast members before without treating the following episode "like a pilot," but losing Heida Reid as Kellett and Christiane Paul as Jaeger isn't quite the same as losing the top-billed Luke Kleintank when there was no other SSA on the Fly Team who could step into his shoes.
Of course, Forrester had been setting Vo up to take on more of a leadership position last season, but she was not promoted over hiatus to Supervisory Special Agent status to take over the Fly Team. That tracks, as she is early in her career and Mitchell has been in the FBI for years even after a decade as a cop. (No, I'm not referring to his ten seasons of Chicago P.D.)
But since she has that history with Mitchell, will it be tricky at all for him to work with her as more of an equal than a trainee? Jesse Lee Soffer weighed in:
No, I don't think it's going to be tricky. He trusts her, and he respects her. He respects the agent that she's become, and she kind of becomes his right hand in some ways. There's times where he's got some plan, and she's going, 'You're off the reservation right now. Reel it in.' And he listens, and he says so. He says he trusts her, and he pays her that respect.
Whether he comes around and starts listening to Smitty's concerns as the team's Europol liaison is a different matter, based on what happened in Jesse Lee Soffer's first episode! So, with the show having a fresh start insofar as there's a new leading man this season, should fans expect International to delve into Mitchell's backstory? I asked the actor that very question, and he shared:
Absolutely. Characters from his past come back. Greg Czonka, Beau Knapp's character, [comes back]. He makes this threat and he ends up getting out. There's a whole arc there.
While it definitely would be a reboot of sorts if FBI: International changed into a fully serialized show with this "whole arc" unfolding week after week after week, there's no reason to expect that this arc will be handled any differently than how International approached Forrester's by just going back to it between batches of standalone episodes. In fact, Mitchell explains his approach to the job as boss in the below clip from the next episode:
Well, if any of the characters were on the fence about Mitchell more than they were admitting, Jesse Lee Soffer's character welcoming Tank back into the Fly Team seemed to earn him a lot of points! All in all, I expect that Season 4 will feel like a reboot in some ways with a new leading man who hadn't gotten a soft introduction or backdoor pilot in an earlier episode, but not a whole new show.
Most of the cast stuck around from the end of last season, and FBI: Most Wanted pulled it off when Dylan McDermott joined Season 3 after Julian McMahon's Jess LaCroix was killed off; why shouldn't FBI: International successfully do the same? See more of how Jesse Lee Soffer's SSA Wes Mitchell fits in (or doesn't) with the rest of the Fly Team with new episodes of FBI: International on Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET, between FBI at 8 p.m. ET after losing a cast member and FBI: Most Wanted with some relationship updates at 10 p.m. ET, all on CBS.
