CSI: Vegas’ Unplanned Series Finale Will ‘Definitely’ Leave You With Cliffhangers, Paula Newsome Warns

Las Vegas crime lab supervisor Maxine Roby is “in a bit of a noodle” for much of CSI: Vegas‘ Season 3-slash-series finale, airing this Sunday at 10/9c.

The latest CSI franchise entry was cancelled on April 19 as Season 3 averaged north of 5.9 million total viewers — up 4% from its Season 2 audience. Alas, out of the 14 original dramas that America’s Most-Watched Network has aired this TV season, the Sin City procedural ranks last in viewers.

Heading into the unplanned series ender, Maxine (played by Paula Newsome) and Chris (Jay Lee) were snooping around tech titan Truman Thomas’ secret AI robot-populated, DNA-hacking lab when a canister of poisonous gas was lobbed in their direction. Chris, in a bid to save them, swatted away the canister but inhaled a debilitating amount of gas. Before Maxine could do anything, an unseen goon’s pistol was jabbed at the back of her head.

As Sunday’s intense finale unfolds, Max “is in a bit of a noodle,” Newsome previews.

“It’s not often when she’s actually in a place like this,” the actress continues. “You take on a job like this, you have to expect there to be a certain amount of danger, but when you wake up in the morning you wouldn’t expect you’d have to deal with it yourself, or look at one of your employees [possibly dying]. So yeah, it’s a bit of a noodle.”

While Catherine (Marg Helgenberger) and the rest of the CSI team arrive on the scene to puzzle over where Maxine has disappeared to — there’s no sign of a second exit from the room she and Chris were in — new details, and a powerful new adversary (played by Iron Man‘s Faran Tahir), will emerge to shed light on what the hidden lab is actually about.

“There’s much more to be seen, there’s much more to know…,” Newsome teases. “It’s a scary situation, this AI thing, the stuff that we get to see Max deal with.”

Newsome says that by the time CSI: Vegas fades to black on Sunday night, “there will be a bit of a resolution between Max and Joshua (Matt Lauria),” regarding the latter’s season-opening demotion to a Level 1 CSI. But whereas, say, CBS’ similarly unceremoniously snuffed NCIS: Hawai’i dropped merely one tease of what’s (not) to come, CSI: Vegas will “definitely” leave viewers with multiple cliffhangers, Newsome says.