FBI isn't holding back in changing characters' personal lives in Season 6 after hitting 100 episodes in the fifth season finale, and the source Maggie's next hurdle is a personal tragedy. The death of her friend Jess just after being made guardian of her daughter means that Maggie suddenly has responsibility for a little girl. Considering that the next episode in the 2024 TV schedule, called "Behind the Veil," is quite literally going to be explosive, Missy Peregrym dropped some intriguing details about Maggie's unexpected new status quo when speaking with CinemaBlend.
Despite Maggie sharing that she was considering IVF to Isobel in the previous episode, she is suddenly given the responsibility of a young girl who is already old enough to know, love, and miss her mother in the wake of Jess' death. In "Behind the Veil" on April 2, the clock will be ticking on the team racing to find a bomber before another deadly explosion. When I spoke with Missy Peregrym about Maggie's freshly complicated life, she shared how her character's work meshes with motherhood... or rather, how they don't mesh. The actress said:
Not great. I think it's really difficult. Her life is her work and instinctually her work requires her to put herself in danger every single day, and take risks for the greater good to keep everybody safe, and having a child at home that she's responsible for and needs to come home for every day is a conflict. Definitely. And I think that the two don't really go together, which I find fascinating and I find interesting, and I love this dynamic because there's so many women who actually do this in their life.
Maggie knows better than most agents on FBI the potential toll of fighting for the greater good, after she spent months hospitalized from exposure to sarin gas and then was still dealing with the trauma of it after returning to work. While that level of damage doesn't happen on a weekly basis, there's hardly an episode that goes by without the character in some kind of mortal peril.
But Maggie also has experience with attempting to balance personal complications with the job, even if she wasn't always successful when it came to her sister. I asked Missy Peregrym if Maggie would hesitate about actually stepping up to parent Ella, and she explained:
I think Maggie's personality is that she'll do it, and she really cares about [Ella] and the reason why she even does his job in the first place is because she cares about people and that's her driving force. So to have a child and someone who she loves already, and also to honor Jess, she is taking this on and still questioning these things and it's going to be, I think, a bumpy road into what's best.
Would Maggie really be the character who fans have been watching for more than 100 episodes now if she tried to pass on the responsibility for Ella to somebody else without at least trying her very best? This is admittedly a bigger bump in the road than usual for the agent, but as Missy Peregrym noted, she already loves Ella.
Maggie also has plenty of people who care about her on FBI, ranging from her partner who has supported her through thick and thin to her boss who already supported her potentially becoming a mother when she floated the idea of IVF. But is there anybody Maggie would actually lean on for help if needed? I asked Missy Peregrym that very question, and she said:
I think she does lean on OA and really shares her life with OA, but I'm curious to see if she'll end up having conversations with Scola since Scola is a father. There's parents on the show already. I wonder if she'll speak with Jubal, who's gone through this. Jubal's position is already even different than what she's doing. Scola is the closest one who would understand the risk and also being a parent and needing to be home at the end of the day. So we'll see if that comes up.
Maggie does have options for parents on FBI if she needs advice, although Jubal hasn't exactly had the smoothest journey has a father and Scola's parenthood experience has been with an infant. That said, as Peregrym noted, Scola knows the stress of being a field agent and a new parent.
The promo for the next episode doesn't give away what to expect from Maggie as a new mom, but the good news – for fans, anyway – is that this explosive episode is going to hit close to home for a member of the team. Take a look:
The "Behind the Veil" episode of FBI will air on Tuesday, April 2 at 8 p.m. ET, followed by FBI: International at 9 p.m. and FBI: Most Wanted at 10 p.m., all on CBS. You can also find all three shows in the FBI shared universe streaming via Paramount+ subscription now.
