FBI Post-Mortem: Rick Eid on the ‘Fear Nothing’ Twist and How OA Will Be Coping

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Tuesday, April 19 episode “Fear Nothing.”]

The FBI team is (temporarily) down a team member.

After being exposed to sarin gas on the Tuesday, April 19 episode, “Fear Nothing,” Maggie (Missy Peregrym) was trapped inside a locked room, as a desperate OA (Zeeko Zaki) tried to save her. It took multiple attempts (thanks to bulletproof glass and the lack of a proper face covering), but OA was able to rescue his partner and administer an antidote.

Unfortunately, Maggie didn’t exactly bounce back. Though the doctors expressed optimism about her recovery, the episode ended with her still unconscious in the hospital—and clearly in no position to work. (This was Peregrym’s last episode before maternity leave; UPDATE, July 8: Peregrym announced the birth of her child, Mela Joséphine Oakley, on Instagram and noted she’d miss the first part of FBI’s upcoming fifth season. “@fbicbs is starting up again in a couple weeks, but I will be returning to work in September,” she wrote. “I’m relieved and grateful that I am afforded the space to bond with my family, to rest and heal and be a mother (which is harder than work!). I understand this is a luxury, and I wish every mother/parent/caretaker had this too.“)

But how will the team handle this traumatic temporary loss? FBI boss Rick Eid offered a few teases of what’s to come…

As writers, what was the approach to handling Missy’s maternity leave this go-round? What led to this particular storyline?
We knew generally when Missy was looking to begin her maternity leave, so we knew we had to do something to give her a proper send off. And then one of the writers, Joe Halpin, had this great idea about illegal chemical weapons resurfacing, and we decided to turn that into the “Maggie going away” episode. We just tried to take that plot and build a character story between her and OA into it.

Even if you don’t have access to Missy, physically, how much will we be hearing updates about Maggie’s health for the rest of the season?
You will know that Maggie’s okay. She’s going to live, she’s going to be fine, and she’s going to come back—so we’ll know all that. And we’ll touch base, periodically. Other characters will ask OA about her or there’ll be some conversations about her. But I don’t think we’ll actually see Maggie until she officially returns.

This is something that, understandably, seems like it has already wildly traumatized OA. How is he coping in the aftermath? And how is it impacting the way he’s doing his job going forward?
Episode 20, the whole episode explores what you just touched on.

The episode will explore the emotional pressure he’s under, the stress he’s under, and what he experienced in episode 18. It comes back to [did this huge trauma] affect his judgment, does it not affect his judgment, is he under too much pressure? Does he need to talk to someone, a professional, to deal with some of the stress? Or are the other characters just imagining that’s what he’s going through?

It’s really clear how much OA cares for Maggie. When she returns, are we going to see a bit from her side of things?
When she comes back, I think you’ll definitely feel how important these two people are to each other and how important their relationship is to each other. Maggie will probably be affected by what happened in some way.

She will have been out of the office for let’s call it six months in TV time. She’s dealt with physical injuries, probably mental injuries, so you [can] imagine how that affects the way she views the world, she views her job, how she handles cases, whether there’s trauma, whether there’s other psychological issues that might present. It’s something we need to dig into.

Last time Maggie was off the canvas, the show had a crossover with CHICAGO P.D. to temporarily fill out the team. Will anyone new be joining the mix, or will it just be the agents we know until Maggie is back?
A new person will be brought into the mix. We’re going to keep it as a surprise for now, but it will not be Tracy Spiridakos from CHICAGO P.D. [Laughs.]

Is it someone, perhaps, that we’ve seen in the very recent past on FBI?
It is very possible that is the case.

Possibly on a related note, there was a really great chemistry with Nina (Shantel VanSanten ) and Scola (John Boyd). What can you say about how you plan to explore that relationship and what that might look like going forward?
I think by the end of that episode, they aired out their differences in their past and they’re back on solid footing and there’s a chance we may see that relationship explored down the road.

Looking towards the end of the season, what can you tease about the final episodes this year?
The finale is, I think, just as intense and scary and emotional as this sarin gas episode, because it involves Jubal and his son. It’s very emotional and powerful.

Are we digging into the Vargas of it all or is that something that’s being saved for later?
No Vargas. Vargas is great, and the actor, David Zayas, is amazing, but this is a father-son story.

How much of it will be about Jubal’s son’s health or is it an entirely different storyline?
It doesn’t involve his health, specifically; it’s something else entirely. But his son is still battling leukemia. It hasn’t gone away, but it just a powerful father-son the story.

FBI, Tuesdays, 8/7c, CBS

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