What is Operation Comescu?

May's NCIS: Los Angeles Season 2 finale began and ended with that burning question. When the show begins its third season this fall, it picks up right where we left off.

Almost exactly. Only three minutes will have elapsed, with Hetty and Callen still very much in harm's way. The episode then plays out in “real time,” TV Line reports.

“It has a narrative drive that is such that you should really go to the bathroom before you watch,” creator Shane Brennan says. “We cocked the gun, so to speak.”

On top of the next phase of the increasingly complex Callen origin plot line, a main character gets shot, “and the ramifications of that resonate for four episodes.”

Sounds like the show is raising the stakes in a big way.

When the action resumes in Prague, the team is in grave danger. Hetty tries to pass off Callen off as dead, unaware he has already stepped into the lion's den beside her.

NCIS: Los Angeles premieres September 20 after NCIS on CBS.

Steve Marsi is the Managing Editor of TV Fanatic. Follow him on Google+ or email him here.