Warning: spoilers are ahead for FBI's Season 8 fall finale event on CBS, available streaming next day with a Paramount+ subscription.
The eighth season of FBI quite literally ended with a bang in the fall 2025 TV schedule, with CBS' hit drama delivering a lot of action to hold fans over until the winter premiere in the 2026 TV schedule. The case of the week started out with a series of murders that were tragic but not quite finale-worthy, then took a chaotic turn when a terrorist group struck at the heart of Manhattan, nearly killing Jubal's son in the process.
Jubal crossed some major lines in the aftermath, and Jeremy Sisto spoke with CinemaBlend about potential consequences and what wasn't even in the script.
What Happened To Jubal In FBI's Two-Part Fall Finale
It was clear by the end of the first hour why the FBI team needed two episodes to tell the story of the 3rd Testament terrorist group, with attacks that took down communications and transit before unleashing cyanide gas on a tunnel of helpless civilians.
For Jubal, the case was intensely personal as soon as Tyler was caught in an explosion, and a terrifying ambulance ride meant that he was in no mood to be reasoned with when he tracked down the man with answers that could crack it wide open.
He resorted to torture to try and get the answers, informing the man that he was there as a father rather than an FBI agent, and he wasn't following the rules. Jubal proved that he wasn't bluffing when he stuck his finger into the man's open wound, and might have done worse if Maggie and OA hadn't shown up in time to take over.
Their suspect accidentally let something slip that helped them save a lot of lives, and Tyler ultimately woke up to his parents' immense relief, but the episode ended without any clear sign of whether Jubal will face professional consequences for his actions.
Jeremy Sisto Shares What Wasn't In The Script
Jeremy Sisto wasn't kidding when he previewed the "worst kind of scenarios" for Jubal in the fall finale, and Isobel wasn't exactly thrilled when he disobeyed orders. The crisis went down not long after higher-ups at the Bureau decided that his history meant that he wasn't a good candidate for promotion; will he face any consequences for his actions from those higher-ups? The Law & Order vet responded with "I don't think so," then continued:
I think he's waiting for the phone to ring, for sure, [because of] what he did. The pushing on the wound wasn't even scripted. That just sort of came up and felt right, but that's not okay for an agent to do. That's definitely not good, so I would say that he's definitely waiting with the phone to ring. But I think they also stopped this really horrible thing from happening and a lot can be forgotten in the wake of something [like that]. But in real life, I think it would be hard for this not to be handled in a more direct way.
Just because Jubal didn't get a slap on the wrist (or something much more substantial) by the time the credits rolled doesn't mean that he's guaranteed to be off the hook. It should be interesting to see if that unscripted act of torture is a factor in what Jubal does next as Season 8 continues. Sisto went on to share what he liked about the dark twist for his character:
Nobody was there when it happened, and he's going to punish himself quite a bit for letting this sense of righteous vengeance motivate him. Ultimately, it didn't do any good, and I liked that that was the story, because it doesn't. That kind of acting from that kind of emotion, he doesn't get any information out of this guy because he's torturing him. He figures out his next move based on something the guy accidentally says. It didn't seem to me like the guy was going to budge. So I don't know what would have happened if Maggie and OA hadn't shown up, but I'd like to think [Jubal] would have come to his senses.
Whether or not Jubal faces any professional consequences for his actions, the eight seasons of FBI so far proved that blaming himself is one of Jubal's specialties. That'll be especially true if he acknowledges that his tactics didn't work, because any confession he got out of torture wouldn't have been reliable.
And that wasn't even the only unscripted twist of the two-parter. The stakes changed from professional to personal for Jubal when he discovered that his son had been caught in an explosion. The ASAC rode with his son in the ambulance, muttering to himself the whole time. I asked Jeremy Sisto if that was scripted, and he shared:
That was not, no. I don't know where that came from. If you're not religious, that's the moment when you become religious. You're just like, 'Please, please, please, please.' I haven't seen it, and I don't fully remember exactly what I was doing, but it wasn't planned. I'm sure it came from a sense of just pleading with the unknown to not let this happen. 'Please don't let it be my boy that dies.'
Fortunately, Tyler did not die, and the episode ended on a heartwarming note for the Valentine family. The teen still has a road to recovery ahead of him, but considering the length of the upcoming winter hiatus, he may be back on his feet by the time FBI returns to primetime in the new year.
FBI will be back with new episodes starting on Monday, February 23 at 9 p.m. ET on CBS, ahead of the long-awaited premiere of CIA with Nick Gehlfuss and Tom Ellis at 10 p.m. ET. If you'll want a fix of FBI between new episodes, you can find the full run of the series so far streaming on Paramount+.
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