Spoilers ahead for the Season 9 premiere of FBI, streaming now with a Paramount+ subscription!
The Season 9 premiere of FBI hit the 2026 TV schedule on Monday, and it was full of action and emotion. After the Season 8 finale ended with a shocker that saw OA get fired and join an off-the-books strike force undercover, OA’s status in the new season stayed largely the same. He was still undercover with very little contact with his team, and unfortunately, he got some devastating news at the end of the episode that he was not looking forward to. Now star Zeeko Zaki weighed in on it.
In the episode, “Rendition,” OA remained on Anna Vorpe’s strike force, trying to get more intel on the team’s unorthodox ways of getting information – i.e., torture. After an asset died, OA went to Isobel in the hopes that he had enough, but alas, he didn’t. She told him that someone was basically protecting Anna and the team, and they were untouchable, meaning he had to get in closer. Being cut off from his team and working with another whose values don’t align with his has been hard, and Zaki told CinemaBlend how OA is going to deal with it:
Yeah, I think it's that first moment where he thinks he got enough. And I think when you're undercover, and you're gathering information, if you really do think you're at the end, and you've got it, you also will feel that you could get caught in that moment, right? Because it's like, boom, time to go and report what you found. So it's a scary sort of moment that you have to go back in when you kind of just ran and tattled on somebody. Now I gotta go back and sit with them. And, you know, luckily Anna doesn't know what I've been up to. But it's definitely sort of the heartbreaking moment where you realize, like, this is gonna be harder, and this is gonna definitely affect our team because now we're all sort of in it.
While Maggie and OA had a couple of brief reunions in the premiere, he’s been undercover for three months. It’s taking a toll on not only him but everyone on the team. Isobel and Maggie are aware of what he’s doing, but for Jubal, Scola, and Eva, they still believe that OA was fired for real and he’s never coming back. So not being able to relay that kind of information to the rest of his team is hard, and with the way he reacted when he was talking to Isobel, it’s getting harder for him.
As Zaki pointed out, Anna doesn’t know what OA is up to, at least for now. He’s been undercover before, and he’s had to get himself out of some pretty tight places, but this is different. He’s keeping secrets from his team, he’s digging himself in pretty deep. It’s hard to tell just how long this undercover op will go on for, but it’s not going to be easy.
Meanwhile, the undercover op has not only been hard on OA. Maggie has had trouble with the entire situation, between not having much contact with him and getting a new partner who she’s still trying to get used to. She and OA did have an unexpected reunion during a raid, and OA was forced to hit Maggie to keep up the act. They later had an actual reunion that was much quieter and more secure, but it was clear that it’s been difficult for both of them. They're a top TV partnership, and it's hard not to see them together.
There is no telling how this whole undercover storyline will go, but it seems like there is still a lot to tell with it. And it’s unknown which way it will go. Tune in on Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on CBS to see how it all turns out in Season 9 of FBI.
