Well, at least Anna has been using her time wisely.

Fear that Callen might be in danger was what brought Anna out of the shadows on NCIS: Los Angeles Season 11 Episode 15.

Too bad she was still persona non grata in the U.S. Then Callen and Sam could stop going through all those NCIS agent candidate files.

Also, Kensi and Deeks really could have used her help in the field.

Ah, well. Maybe another mission, after Hetty goes through channels to cut through the red tape.

That assumes that Hetty will be around more for the last half-dozen episodes of the season. Sadly, that's not likely to be the case.

This marks only Hetty's fourth appearance this season. So expecting her for more than one or two more episodes is probably wishful thinking.

Even Callen was seemingly resigned to the likelihood that he will have to take over for Hetty, whether he wants to or not.

His heart wasn't in it, and neither was Sam's, as they both kept finding excuses to flush candidates.

Neither one of them wants to break in a new partner. They're still recovering from Deeks, and that's been, what, a decade now?

Hey, it looks like Fatima gets in some trouble next episode, so maybe she could just come back and they wouldn't have to break in someone new. She could just rotate among the remaining three field agents and Callen until she gets comfortable with them and vice versa.

Unfortunately, there's a vocal minority out there that would come out against a Muslim agent. So that idea probably won't fly.

TPTB have had the better part of three seasons to come up with a workable transition plan. Let's hope it's better than CBS cancels the series before they can make up their minds.

Or team members can just keep doing what they've been doing for the past couple of seasons, with Callen being in de facto charge and occasionally shuffling some paperwork. That certainly beats all the substitute supervisors that have been used intermittently.

This episode asked the question "Why did Callen bother hunting for Anna?"

The way they'd left it was that she would return when she was ready.

And that's exactly how it worked out. She came out of hiding when she had a good reason to do so.

We still wouldn't have seen Anna if Darius hadn't resurfaced and Anna wasn't concerned that Callen might be in Darius's sights.

After all, she was taking a big risk coming up for air.

Plus she had to temporarily leave behind her partnership with Joelle. which gave her something useful to do while working from the edges of society.

Darius/Resnikov has long been the other side of the coin from Callen. While Callen landed on the side of right, Darius landed on the side of wrong.

But, in the worlds in which they operate, it's a thin line between right and wrong.

When even Hetty wasn't sure which way Darius would go, that certainly meant he was close to the edge.

It sounded like Darius meant to live a normal life after he escaped death in Cuba on NCIS: Los Angeles Season 10 Episode 22.

He fell in love with a nice girl, then she got abducted by human traffickers.

Boy, was that a mistake on their parts!

Two things Darius has ingrained in him are to hunt and to kill. So he left a pile of bodies around the globe trying to catch up with the traffickers.

He may have done so if he hadn't gotten picked up by Callen and NCIS.

At least Darius was smart enough to come clean about what he was doing and explain who the woman was in the photo he was carrying.

After Darius had done all the heavy lifting, it would have been wrong to shut him out of the takedown. They woudn't have even known about the human-trafficking ring if not for him.

Then it just came down to the question of whether he could be trusted not to put a bullet in Callen's back.

Initially, Hetty wasn't sure of what way Darius would go. It wasn't until after he gave her the necessary account number that she pushed for him to go on the mission.

Just as well she did. Things would have fallen apart at the party if he hadn't started improvising, bidding wildly until he could get his hands on a gun. And then the assault began.

It was hard to predict what Callen would do after he hallucinated about Darius killing his mother then woke up. Of course, he shot the thug about to ambush Darius instead.

As Hetty pointed out, the circle of revenge needed to be broken.

It was a touching scene at the end when Darius and Nina got to say goodbye to Nikita, right after he decided to defect and spill all he knew about Russian intelligence to the CIA.

It seemed like more of the same when Callen announced that Anna had gone back to work, leaving him behind just like Joelle had done every time.

It was a pleasant surprise to discover that Anna had decided to stick around, hiding in Callen's apartment over the bar. Hopefully, he's picked up some furniture.