John Boyd Says Scola’s a ‘Different Person’ After ‘FBI’ Midseason Premiere About 9/11, Brother’s Death (Exclusive)

FBI’s Stuart Scola has been carrying the weight of his brother’s death with him for years — and actor John Boyd says things will finally come to a head in the midseason premiere.

“We get to see Scola’s 9/11 origin story with his brother sort of come full circle,” Boyd, who plays Scola on the CBS series, exclusively told Us Weekly while previewing the Tuesday, January 28, episode.

The 43-year-old actor explained: “There’s a huge resolution to the loss of his brother, and it intertwines with a case where we’re trying to thwart terrorists that have hijacked planes’ navigation systems in air [on] commercial airliners.”

The episode, titled “Descent,” will hit home for Scola, who lost his brother, Doug, during the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City.

“It’s really an interesting case and very, very intense for Scola, of course, because of his history,” Boyd added.

Fans previously learned about Scola’s brother during season 4, episode 8, which aired in 2021. “Fire and Rain” saw Scola start to spiral when his team was faced with stopping a terrorist attack that felt like the acts of 9/11 in which al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked several planes, crashing two into the Twin Towers.

Scola also revealed in the episode that his brother was a casualty of the attacks and part of the reason he left Wall Street and started working for the FBI.

Now in season 7, Scola will once again be forced to relive one of the worst days of his life when a terrorist group from Bolivia hijacks commercial planes — one of which is headed into a no-fly zone and therefore as risk of being shot down by the U.S. military with innocents on board.

“I think what’s going through his mind during the case is he’s not really able to stop and question it and process it,” Boyd told Us. “I think he’s in a place of fight or flight. He’s doing what he can do to get through it.”

While tension is high for everyone on the team, Boyd said Scola has several revelations as he tries to stop a possible mass-casualty event from happening again.

“I think there’s a moment where he’s staring into the eyes of the person — of the terrorist — and he sees that they’re the same,” the actor explained to Us. “That they both have the same pain, that they carry the same loss. That’s the thing that … makes him ready at the end of it [for closure].”

Boyd said that Scola’s intensity over the case is “worth it in the end,” teasing that viewers will see how exactly he gets closure in the final few moments.

“The thing I love about this episode is by the end of the case, Scola is a different person,” Boyd shared. “He’s ready to do something that he wasn’t. He has a new outlook. He has a new perspective.”

That new outlook is linked to his brother’s death and Scola’s new support system which includes partner Nina Chase (Shantel VanSanten), who wasn’t in his life when Doug died.

While Scola is ready to move forward after the midseason premiere there is one thing he’s missing: a new partner.

“It’s been interesting to kind of have this phase of being partner-less and getting to rediscover himself as an agent a little bit,” Boyd shared with Us, noting that Scola partners up with agents Maggie Bell (Missy Peregrym) and Omar Adom “OA” Zidan (Zeeko Zaki) during the January 28 episode after his interim partner Sydney Ortiz (Lisette Olivera) gets recruited to another position.

He revealed that “anything’s possible” when it comes to when he’ll get a more permanent partner after Tiffany “Tiff” Wallace (Katherine Renee Kane) left the job during the season 7 premiere in October 2024.

“We could have a little more speed dating,” Boyd said with a laugh. “Someone could drop in. It could be a Cinderella slipper situation. I don’t know. Anything can happen.”

FBI returns to CBS on Tuesday, January 28, at 8 p.m. ET.