FBI season 9 premiere: Isaiah Green is Maggie's new partner, but she hasn't given up on OA coming back

FBI returned for season 9 on October 5, 2026, an hour earlier than last season at 8/7c on CBS, and it did not hit the reset button. In the season 8 finale, "Defector," OA (Zeeko Zaki) was seemingly fired by ADIC Lawrence Green (Curtiss Cook) for protesting the cover-up of a virus outbreak. The firing was a setup, arranged with Maggie (Missy Peregrym) and Isobel (Alana De La Garza), so that Anna Vorpe (Claire Coffee) would recruit him onto her off-the-books strike team. The premiere, "Rendition," picks up three months later, with OA still undercover.

Meet Isaiah Green

Maggie's new partner is Isaiah Green (Roland Buck III), who happens to be ADIC Green's nephew. Yes, the nephew of the man who publicly fired OA. Showrunner Mike Weiss told TV Insider not to call him a "nepo baby," but the rest of the team is not exactly rushing to trust him, and Maggie spends most of the premiere struggling to connect with him. Here's how his first day went:

• The case: a young traveler is found shot dead in a state park, and the team learns she witnessed the execution of someone tied to a top-secret government project.
• The collision: the strike team snatches the project's director, Cameron Koleo, right out from under the FBI, then tortures him.
• The beating: to protect his cover, OA has to take Isaiah down himself.
• The crossover: Necar Zadegan's Nikki Reynard from CIA, which premiered its second season right after FBI, drops in on the case.

Maggie's new partner is the nephew of the man who fired her old partner, and her old partner just beat him up on the job.

OA isn't coming back yet

Koleo dies, and OA assumes a kidnapping plus a dead civilian is finally enough to take Anna down. It isn't. Isobel tells him the strike team was operating under a national security exemption, that someone powerful is protecting Anna, and that he needs to stay put until he finds out who. The man playing him has a grim read on what that does to OA:

"The longer you stay in the fire, the easier it is to burn."

— Zeeko Zaki, to TVLine

Weiss told CinemaBlend that the toll comes from who OA is: someone built on integrity, loyalty, and telling the truth, now stuck in a job that runs on the opposite. The extended stay was also a deliberate call from the top. Zaki told Give Me My Remote that when he read the season 8 finale, his only question for Weiss was, "Am I getting fired?"

He also said Dick Wolf personally wanted OA to stay undercover for a few more episodes rather than coming right back.

Maggie isn't sitting that out, though. In episode 2, "Omissions," airing October 12, 2026, the team investigates the murder of an undercover NYPD officer outside his daughter's school, while Maggie gets to know Isaiah and gets quietly pulled into helping OA on the side.