Lucy Tara's 12 Best Moments From NCIS: Hawaii

Lucy Tara (Yasmine Al-Bustami) is a woman of many talents. A former cheerleader, a master of online poker, and an expert in historical fashion, she brings a lot to the table as the most junior member of the "NCIS: Hawaii" team. Lucy is often referred to as scrappy, and that's probably the best word we can think of to describe her. Not only is she the youngest member of the team, but she's also the smallest, but her small stature never limits her ability to do her job. If we've learned anything about Lucy so far, it's that you should never underestimate her capacity to take down criminals, big or small.

Lucy is also probably the most cheerful member of the team, though there's still a lot we don't know about her. Having been raised by a wealthy family that used money to get what they wanted, Lucy is committed to doing things the right way, even when it's hard. If her tumultuous relationship with Whistler (Tori Anderson) is any indication, she sometimes makes things harder than they need to be — but hey, nobody's perfect.

There's a lot to love about Lucy, which is why we thought it would be a good idea to take a look at some of her best moments. Whether she's taking down the bad guys, speaking from her heart, or just being a lovable goofball, it's hard not to root for the team's scrappiest agent. Still not convinced? Keep reading to explore what makes Lucy Tara worth cheering for.

In the world of the show, Kai (Alex Tarrant) is the newest member of the NCIS team. As such, he has a lot to learn about his fellow agents. For example, in the third episode of Season 1, he discovers that there is more to Lucy than meets the eye. Lucy, Kai, and Jesse (Noah Mills) infiltrate a gang hideout in search of one gang member in particular. The others flee, while their suspect hides inside, firing at them from the second floor.

While Jesse draws his fire, Kai and Lucy head to the back of the house, where there is a second-story deck. Lucy quickly hatches a plan and asks Kai to give her a boost up to the deck. When Kai hesitates, Lucy says, "It's okay, I was a flyer." Kai still looks perplexed, but does what Lucy has asked anyway. Lo and behold, Lucy launches herself off Kai and swings up onto the deck, while Kai looks on in surprise.

Jesse explains to Kai what a flyer is — a "cheerleader who gets thrown in the air" — while Lucy sneaks in and takes down the suspect with a well-timed body slam. Kai and Lucy are both extremely impressed, as are we. The scene is one of many moments where Lucy uses her small stature to her advantage and takes down a suspect before they even know what hit them. Who says Texas cheerleaders can't fight?

Season 1 was a bumpy road for Lucy and Kate. As a DIA officer, Kate often had the job of withholding information from the NCIS team when it pertained to national security. This meant the team — including Lucy — was often annoyed with her when she came around, despite the fact that she was just doing her job.

"The Tourist" is another episode where the NCIS team tries to work around Whistler and the DIA in order to solve their case. But, even though Whistler is exasperated by their antics, she's still the one who helps them save the day in the end. That night, after the case has been wrapped up, Whistler finds Lucy standing by her car in the parking lot. Lucy thanks Whistler for what she did to close the case, and apologizes for the fact that they made things difficult for her.

Whistler waves the apology away, telling Lucy how she's gotten used to being the bad guy. Lucy seems to realize at this moment just how hard it is for Whistler in her position, especially considering she doesn't have a loving team on her side like Lucy does. "I don't think you're bad," she tells Whistler, stepping closer. "In fact, I think you're amazing," she says, caressing Whistler's face. Whistler just about melts under Lucy's touch, and it was clearly the right thing to say at that moment. Though it's still a while until they finally work things out, Lucy being understanding of Kate's position is an important first step.

Lucy Tara has had her fair share of badass moments on the show, and we can't help but cheer for her every time she takes down a suspect against all odds. In the seventh episode of Season 1, the team has chased an assailant to a cliff overlooking the ocean. Lucy jumps on top of him like a spider monkey and tackles him to the ground, banging his head against a rock until he's out of commission and she can grab her gun.

He tells her he's not coming in alive, but then the rest of the team comes up behind him and he has no choice. Though Lucy's a little worse for the wear after the encounter, it was still an impressive show of strength and skill. It's made all the more remarkable considering that Lucy is not a big fan of the ocean and just engaged in hand-to-hand combat near the edge of a cliff. Big drop or not, we'd bet on Lucy in a fight any day.

Halfway through Season 1, Lucy has her biggest career achievement to date: Her first undercover assignment. She goes undercover at a high-stakes poker game in order to find out which of the players is behind the theft of an important piece of evidence. Lucy initially volunteers for the job because she is the best at poker out of everyone, only for the team to find out she only ever plays poker online. But Lucy is adamant that she can do that job, so she puts on her best rich girl Texas accent and dives right in.

Things get a little out of hand, and Lucy is forced to go on the run with a judge who she thinks she is protecting. As it turns out, the judge is actually the person they've been after all along, and Lucy finds herself on a rooftop with the judge pointing a gun at her. He thinks he has the upper hand — she is a little lady in a cocktail dress, after all — but what he hasn't noticed is that she's been inching closer to him all along. "Little tip, though, never let your target get this close," she tells him before she tackles his gun away.

When he runs at her, she uses his forward momentum to push him off the roof and he falls to his death, just as Jesse and Kai finally arrive. While her troubles aren't over for the day (she and Whistler will break up in T-minus 30 minutes), her first undercover mission has been a success. As the judge learns the hard way, "Texas Cinderella," as Detective Reed (Lauren Cook) calls her, can beat you at poker and beat you in a fight.

Lucy Tara may live on an island and work for the Navy, but she also happens to be deathly afraid of the ocean. There aren't many people in the world that Lucy would venture out into open water for, but Jesse happens to be one of them. When Jesse and his daughter are kidnapped while on a sailing trip, Lucy gets on a boat with Kai to work with the coast guard to try and triangulate their location. This might not seem like a big sacrifice to make, but for Lucy, it's huge.

Our favorite Lucy moment in the episode comes when she and Kai hop on a small motorboat in order to board the sailboat Jesse was on. Lucy — wearing a life jacket that is several sizes too big — looks terrified. In order to pump herself up, Lucy screams a war cry of sorts. "We're coming in with digits and we're gonna kick butt and chew bubblegum!" She yells. Jesse and the kids aren't on the sailboat any longer, but eventually, their efforts are rewarded and everyone gets home safely. Lucy may have looked a little silly with that big life jacket on, but honestly, we're concerned she was the only one wearing one the whole time. The ocean is no joke.

Lucy is a cheerful, bubbly person, and one would be forgiven for thinking she's an open book. But, while it might seem like she wears her heart on her sleeve, there are still some things she keeps close to the chest.

Out of everyone on the team, Ernie (Jason Antoon) has been the most in-the-know about Lucy and Kate's relationship (though we're sure that Jane knew more than she ever let on — she's a former spy, after all). After their breakup, Ernie does his best to try and support Lucy and help her through it. Though she tries to hide it, Ernie can see how heartbroken she is. So, perhaps in order to ease her pain, or perhaps to satiate his own curiosity, Ernie finally asks Lucy how she and Kate first got together.

Lucy gives in and explains to Ernie that she and Whistler initially met while Kate was in Hawaii for a business trip. Then, six months later, Whistler got transferred to Hawaii and they were unexpectedly reunited. Lucy tells Ernie that it seemed easier to keep things casual because of their jobs. When Ernie asks if that was hard, Lucy responds, "You've seen her, what do you think?" We love this scene because we finally get to see Lucy open up to someone about how she really feels about Whistler. What's more, it's also one of Yasmine Al-Bustami's best performances thus far as she totally nails the vulnerability we don't often get to see from Lucy.

Lucy and Kate may have been broken up in the latter half of Season 1, but that doesn't mean their feelings for one another went away. If anything, the distance between them only made these feelings more pronounced, especially when it came to feelings of the thirsty variety.

In "Nightwatch," the team is called in on their day off when a Navy seaman is found murdered. They find themselves at work at 6 AM on a Saturday, and they are in need of Whistler's assistance. Jane and Ernie both look to Lucy, who realizes that, yes, she does know exactly where Whistler is at that hour. So Lucy heads to the beach, peering out into the ocean in search of Whistler.

She finds Whistler all right, just as she's walking out of the water with her surfboard. Whistler is surprised to see her, and Lucy tries to explain her presence but seems to be having a brain malfunction as a result of seeing Whistler standing there in her swimsuit. "I was just looking at you – for you," Lucy stutters. Whistler seems to be amused by Lucy's difficulty to form a coherent sentence, but sobers up when Lucy is finally able to articulate her actual reason for being there. It's one of the funniest moments between Kate and Lucy thus far, and it's a classic example of Lucy's nervous chattiness getting the best of her.

At the beginning of "Nightwatch," things were relatively cheerful. Lucy had a gay meltdown when she saw Kate in a bikini, and the team set off to catch a murderer. But then Kate went off on her own, ignoring Lucy's warning to wait for backup — and found herself with some light head trauma as a result. Lucy dealt with her obvious anguish over Kate's near-death experience by yelling at her to take care of herself before taking off to pursue Kate's assailant.

They eventually catch the culprits, and Lucy comes face to face with the person who attacked the woman she loves (but is also very angry with). Lucy jumps off a ledge to tackle the woman on the beach (a classic Lucy move), before they have a brutal wrestling match on the sand. The woman is on top of Lucy pointing a gun at her and seems to have the upper hand until Lucy takes her own gun and shoots her in the chest.

This is the second time on the show we've seen Lucy kill an assailant in a one-on-one fight, and this time, she doesn't seem to have any remorse about it. Though she's not quite ready to admit how she really feels about Whistler, her actions here speak louder than words. Frankly, Lucy's a little terrifying in this scene, and her steely-eyed determination in taking this woman down is an indication of just how much Kate's brush with death really affected her.

Lucy's had a lot of great fight scenes in the series so far, but our favorite might have to be the one in the penultimate episode of Season 1. Kai, Lucy, and Jesse are in an airport in search of a suspect. They find her, but she spots them and runs away. Lucy, being the fastest of the trio, chases her through the airport and onto a bus waiting outside. They get into a fistfight on the bus, and Lucy uses all her best moves to subdue the suspect. She finishes her off by swinging from the bus handles and delivering a brutal kick to the stomach before pushing her off the bus and tackling her on the pavement.

"Took y'all long enough," Lucy complains when an out-of-breath Jesse and Kai finally arrive. "Not all of us were flyers, Luce," Jesse responds. We can't imagine what the passengers on the bus thought of the fight, but we'd be pretty wary of getting on Lucy's bad side if we saw her take someone down like that. It's not the first time Lucy has proven that being a former cheerleader has its benefits, and it certainly won't be the last.

Lucy and Kate had a long road to get to a place where they could actually be in a healthy relationship. Resentment and lack of communication characterized their relationship in the latter half of Season 1, until Kate finally took Ernie's advice and decided to make a grand gesture to win Lucy back. Kate serenaded Lucy by singing "Make You Feel My Love" at the NCIS potluck at Tennant's house — in front of all of Lucy's colleagues and friends.

You might think this scene would be better suited to be on a list of Kate's best moments, but Lucy had an important role to play here as well. For much of the season, Lucy was so angry with Kate that she wouldn't let her try and make amends and cut her off every time she tried to explain herself. She seemed to feel more comfortable holding on to her anger rather than letting Kate in and giving her the chance to hurt her again.

But, against all odds, Kate's grand gesture actually works, and for once Lucy tells Kate to stop talking in a way that's actually productive. As Kate stands in Tennant's backyard, telling Lucy that she loves her and that she is willing to do it right this time, Lucy abruptly cuts her off. "Shut up already," Lucy says, grabbing Kate's face and kissing her in front of their captive audience. "Kacy" fans breathed a sigh of relief as Lucy finally let go of her stubborn anger and accepted that Kate has been what she's wanted all along.

Kate's grand gesture at the end of Season 1 clearly had a huge impact on Lucy, and at the beginning of the second season, it's clear that it's still on her mind. Lucy is well aware that it took a lot of bravery for Kate to get up there and sing in front of everyone, and she seems to be keen on making some gestures of her own. Kacy fans were delighted by the start of the second season, which featured Kate asleep in bed and Lucy puttering around in her kitchen.

Kate is perplexed by what she sees, and Lucy explains that it's breakfast in bed, obviously. Of course, being that it's Lucy who's cooked breakfast, the spread she's made is enough to feed an entire army. "You know that this is way more than either one of us can eat right?" Whistler asks. "You know that I'm from Texas," Lucy responds with a grin — as if we could ever forget. Lucy worries that she's done too much, but Whistler reassures her that her enthusiasm is exactly what she loves about her.

They are interrupted by a case, of course, but there will be plenty more big breakfasts to come, judging by the reaction this one got. "Domestic Lucy is hot," Kate tells Lucy as she takes in the giant spread before her. We couldn't agree more.

Lucy and Kate are very different people, and that's part of what makes them such a compelling couple. Lucy is easygoing and energetic, while Kate is much more circumspect and withdrawn. Nonetheless, Kate has become much more willing to open up to Lucy and her team as time has gone on, though this type of exposure doesn't always come easily to her. But that's exactly what Lucy is there for — to calm her nerves.

In Season 2, Episode 2, Kate is extremely worried about introducing Lucy to her boss, especially since he assumes Lucy is a man. Lucy obviously picks up on Kate's anxiety, and asks if Kate's ever introduced a girlfriend at work before. Kate evades the question, but it's obvious the answer is no. "You make it look so easy," she tells Lucy.

Lucy does everything she can to comfort Kate, telling her it's okay that her boss assumes she's a man and that it's fine if they don't go, but Kate is committed to making the leap. Before they go and meet Kate's team, Lucy gives Kate one more piece of reassurance. "You won't be alone," she tells Kate. "I'll be right here with ya. Always." We love this scene because it illustrates what a wonderful partner Lucy can be when her heart's really in it. Small but mighty indeed. Or, as Kate's boss would put it, "scrappy."