NCIS like and subscribe puts Special Agent Nick Torres on a possible exit path in Sleeping Dogs. On Tuesday, October 20, 2026, NCIS Season 24, Episode 3 sent him back to Walt Keller with a CIA side job on the table, and that is the kind of move that can alter a franchise lineup fast.
Sleeping Dogs on CBS
Wilmer Valderrama’s Nick Torres is the center of the turn, and the episode gives him a concrete off-ramp instead of a vague tease. Walt Keller, played by Mike O'Malley, offers him work with the CIA after reconnecting with his old undercover identity, Dante Navaro.
Keller says he recruited Torres right out of FLETC, which makes this less like a casual freelance assignment and more like a return to the kind of hidden work that already shaped his career. Torres comes to Keller’s cabin at the end of Sleeping Dogs to discuss the job, so the story has moved beyond suggestion and into decision territory.
Gary Cole and the pull
Gary Cole’s Alden Parker gets the blunt version of where Torres’s head is at: Torres tells him that he enjoyed the horrible things he did undercover and how alive he felt afterward. That line does the heavy lifting here, because it puts the appeal of the CIA work in direct conflict with what NCIS gives him now.
Walt Keller also describes Torres as stuck in a cushy desk job
at NCIS, and that contrast is the real friction in the episode. One side is routine and institutional; the other is dangerous work that seems to fit the part of Torres that still wants the undercover rush.
Ellie Bishop precedent
Season 18 already showed this franchise how a character can leave for deep undercover work when Ellie Bishop exited NCIS for a top-secret CIA mission with Odette Malone. That history gives Sleeping Dogs a usable template: a move that starts as assignment, deepens into commitment, and can separate an agent from the team without needing a loud break.
For Torres, the practical question is whether the CIA side job stays temporary or grows into the full-time work he appears drawn toward. If he follows that pull, NCIS loses not just an agent, but one of the few characters whose undercover history makes an exit feel built into the story rather than bolted on.
