Ryan O’Rourke is a Senior News Writer at Collider with a specific interest in all things adult animation, video game adaptations, and the work of Mike Flanagan. He is also an experienced baseball writer with over six years of articles between multiple outlets, most notably FanSided’s CubbiesCrib. Whether it’s taking in a baseball game, a new season of Futurama or Castlevania: Nocturne, or playing the latest From Software title, he is always finding ways to show his fandom. When it comes to gaming and anything that takes inspiration from it, he is deeply opinionated on what’s going on. Outside of entertainment, he’s a graduate of Eureka College with a Bachelor’s in Communication where he honed his craft as a writer. Between The IV Leader at Illinois Valley Community College and The Pegasus at Eureka, he spent the majority of his college career publishing articles on everything from politics to campus happenings and, of course, entertainment for the student body. Those principles he learned covering the 2020 election, Palestine, and so much more are brought here to Collider, where he has gleefully written on everything from the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes to Nathan Lane baby-birding sewer boys.
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Bill Goodman (Nick Gehlfuss) and Colin Glass (Tom Ellis) are officially getting back into the rhythm of things with Season 2 of the FBI spin-off spy thriller, CIA. After forging a rare trust despite their differing approaches to keeping the country safe and enduring a twisty Season 1, the strait-laced FBI agent and his unpredictable CIA counterpart reunited to take down a dangerous cartel fixer with some aid from Special Agent Stuart Scola (John Boyd) and help a Russian spy betrayed by his comrades. One thing the two haven’t done, however, is lean on an espionage staple and go on an undercover operation together. That’s about to change with Episode 4, “Black Tie Optional.”
CIA’s latest case involves a sinister plot that could plunge the U.S. into war. A wealthy investor has begun funneling sensitive information to Korean operatives, with the prospect of an invasion from enemy forces on the table. To prevent that reality from coming to pass, the entire team must go undercover at a high-end gala event, with Nick and Colin at the center of the plan. While it may be a “Black Tie Optional” affair, they’ll have to dress up for the occasion to blend in. Ahead of the episode’s premiere on CBS, Collider can exclusively share a look at the agents’ respective disguises for the evening, and the crowded environment they’ll have to navigate while completing their mission.
Our first image shows Colin trading his usual rugged attire of jackets and crewnecks for a black suit with a bow tie and glasses, transforming his look from his usual on-the-job wardrobe. Ellis is no stranger to appearing in style, having previously played the titular sharp-dressed eponymous Lucifer in the supernatural mystery procedural, but his new look is the center of attention in the still, as he appears to have something important in his sight. Bill, meanwhile, is posing as a member of the press with a badge while mingling with a woman in another shot. It remains to be seen how the odd couple agents and their allies, Gina Gosian (Natalee Linez) and Nikki Reynard (Necar Zadegan), navigate the lavish setting while trying to keep a low profile and find what they’re looking for.
Four action series. One of them is built around exactly the way you
handle pressure, people, and a room that has just gone very quiet. Here is where you would survive
the trilogy, and probably headline it.
You are precision with a grudge. You don’t posture, you don’t
escalate, and you don’t warn anybody twice. That is exactly why the people who know you are
so careful never to be the reason you start.
You understand the thing the whole franchise is secretly about:
the cars are spectacular, but the crew is the point. You collect people, you keep them, and
you’d drive through a building for any one of them.
You over-prepare and then take the dangerous part yourself
anyway. It looks like control, but it’s really responsibility. You have never worked out how
to ask somebody else to carry the risk.
You are not the most trained person in the building, the best
equipped, or the one anybody would have picked. You are simply the one still standing at the
end, which turns out to be the only qualification that matters.
“Black Tie Optional” will also continue to wrestle with the death of Bill’s father. In the premiere, while still mourning his loss, the FBI agent learns his dad was CIA, which created all manner of questions about his past. Colin assured that they would figure out what it meant together, but it undoubtedly reshapes how Bill views his father, his own career with the FBI, and his participation in the fusion cell. Like the mole in Season 1, his family history will be the overarching mystery for the two agents to unravel, and by the end, according to showrunner Mike Weiss, they may even realize how similar they are deep down. In an interview with TV Insider, Weiss described how the journey Bill and Colin are on in Season 2 deepens the connection between them while shaking up Bill’s arc as the season progresses.
“It felt like a way to fundamentally alter Bill’s understanding of his family and his dad who he held up as a hero, and then for him to realize that on some level, he and Colin, by the end of this long journey that they’re going to go on to get to the bottom of this, are more similar in ways that he couldn’t have possibly predicted when they first met. So if your dad was CIA and your new best friend who you love and hate in equal measure, Colin, is also CIA, I mean, it’s almost as if we’re saying on some level, these two are brothers. This is a story about two people who find each other as adults, and on some deep level, they really are brothers more even than just friends and colleagues. And so I don’t know exactly what idea came in what order in terms of how we wanted to tell that part of the story, but it felt like a way to link these two guys in a really, hopefully surprising way.”
CIA Season 2, Episode 4 premieres on CBS on Monday, October 26. Check out our exclusive images in the gallery above.
!['CIA' Dresses Tom Ellis to the Nines for an Undercover Mission in New Look at Season 2 [Exclusive]](https://static0.colliderimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/3246162_ciaa_s2_0625b-1.jpg)
