Season 23 of NCIS ended with a cliffhanger when a shot rang out in an alley where we last saw Special Agent Nick Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) trying to convince Special Agent Timothy McGee’s (Sean Murray) newly discovered son, Mateo (Patrick Keleher), to put down the gun he was holding. Torres had caught Matteo doing something shady on the NCIS computers, but what and why has not yet been revealed.
It also ended with Kayla Vance (Naomi Grace) trying to decide whether she wants to remain an NCIS agent in honor of her late father, Director Leon Vance (Rocky Carroll), or strike out on her own to continue her work monitoring patterns online of activity that could lead to terrorist events, like the backpack bombings featured in the finale. It was also a chance for Leon to say goodbye to his daughter, which he did by leaving her a discharge form from NCIS should she care to use it with a note that read, “Follow your own path.”
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“There’s really three parts to the Vance story,” NCIS showrunner Steven D. Binder tells Parade in an exclusive interview. “There was losing him in Episode 500, part two was going after the bad guy and getting justice, and part three was the dust settling emotionally for the closest person in the world to him. We view these things through the workplace, and they certainly are a family, but Vance was a father and this was his daughter. That’s really where this story is in my mind, even if it doesn’t feel that way when you just think of the show because you don’t see her as much.
“So, we wanted to settle that, we wanted to really, really play out the family dynamic after losing her father, but we wanted to do it in a way where there could be some closure that comes from it, and that’s when Vance gives her that card at the end. Which is interesting, we went back and forth between Rocky’s voice in that moment and not his voice, and it played better without his voice. So, we wanted to do that, and then the other thing we wanted to do was set some things up for Season 24 that left the audience going, ‘What the hell just happened?’”
Here's everything we know so far about the NCIS 24th season.
NCIS will premiere its 24th season on a Tuesday this fall at 8 p.m. ET/PT. We know the day and time, but not yet the exact release date. Check back.
What time will NCIS air?
NCIS will air at 8 p.m. ET/PT.
Which NCIS cast members are returning for Season 24?
Gary Cole (Special Agent Alden Parker)
Gary ColePhoto credit: Robert Voets/CBS
Sean Murray (Special Agent Timothy McGee)
Sean MurrayPhoto credit: Robert Voets/CBS
Wilmer Valderrama (Special Agent Nicholas “Nick” Torres)
Wilmer ValderramaPhoto credit: Robert Voets/CBS
Katrina Law (Special Agent Jessica Knight)
Katrina LawPhoto credit: Robert Voets/CBS
Brian Dietzen (Dr. Jimmy Palmer)
Brian DietzenPhoto credit: Robert Voets/CBS
Diona Reasonover (Forensic Scientist Kasie Hines)
Diona ReasonoverPhoto credit: Michael Yarish/CBS
Rocky Carroll (NCIS Director Leon Vance)
Rocky Carroll
Photo: Art Streiber/CBS
Following the death of Director Vance at the end of Season 23, he will not be seen in Season 24 unless there are more flashbacks like those that took place in the season finale. But he will be returning to the series as a director of several episodes.
Related: NCIS’ 500th Episode Bombshell: Rocky Carroll Breaks Down That Shocking Death (Exclusive)
According to Binder, there are a couple of reasons not to replace Vance immediately.
“One is I don’t know that you can ever replace this character, this actor,” he said. “When Gibbs [Mark Harmon] left, we didn’t really replace him, we had to bring in another team member, I guess. We replaced the butt in the chair, but certainly we brought in a very different kind of person. I don’t think that we will ever have a director like Leon Vance on the show again, and I don’t mean the actor, I mean the character. It’s going to have to be a very different kind of director.
“So, if we are going to do that at some point and not just retire the jersey, which is the playground we’ve been playing in with interim directors and things like that, it’s going to have to be a very different kind of director. And like the agency itself would be doing, we’re trying to figure out what that is. You bring in a different person. You brought in an interim CEO Steve Jobs, until you figured out who the right CEO was, who in that case turned out to be Steve Jobs, but it takes time.”
Related: NCIS’ Shocker: Showrunner Steven D. Binder on McGee’s Secret Son! (Exclusive)
What happened in the NCIS Season 23 finale?
The Season 23 finale began with a flashback a year before Director Vance was killed and showed his daughter Kayla (Naomi Grace) narrowly escaping a suicide bomber at a coffee shop. When her dad shared the results of the FBI investigation – which he did because she was having trouble sleeping – she didn’t buy their conclusion that it was a lone, suicide bomber, so she started her own private organization using private grant money to monitor online activity to monitor patterns and report potential danger she found to the appropriate agencies.
Cut to the present day, and a second backpack bomb goes off. This time the case is for NCIS and the team tracks down evidence that takes them to a website at a former flower shop, and as they go to arrest everyone, Kayla comes out and explains what she’s doing.
Meanwhile, McGee and Mateo are bonding and Mateo comes to NCIS to take a tour for their internship program, but then Mateo tells McGee that NCIS isn’t really for him, which Torres overhears.
Using information obtained by Kayla, NCIS is about to make an arrest of the individual who they believed was training kids to be a suicide bomber when they were stopped by LaRoche (Seamus Deaver), who returns in his new job as US Associate Attorney General. It turns out that he is investigating Kayla and Vance for using dirty money for her organization.
Kayla is taken off the case as a result, but she still discovers that the author of the book Agnors Bliss, Ivan Wren, is responsible for the suicide bombers, and she realizes he is the next target, and she goes to save him, which she does. Then, NCIS arrested him because they found proof that he was doing it just to make money.
Then when everything looked like a happy ending, in a conversation with Parker, LaRoche admitted he was vying for the job of director, which would be anything but.
Also, Torres heard Jimmy say that Mateo used one of the computers to fill out an application. But Torres knew Mateo wasn’t interested in a career at NCIS so he checked, and there was no application. He went to talk to Mateo, who was carrying a gun, and Mateo told Torres to walk away because “they” could be watching. Next, we heard a gunshot, but as the camera had pulled back, we have no clue as to who shot the gun and if anyone was hit.
Binder, when asked if there could be a third party in the alley that we didn’t see, admitted, “Yes, they certainly could. That was Mateo’s fear; he was worried that he was being followed.”
Whether or not there will be a time jump or we’ll pick up in the alley with Torres and Mateo remains to be seen.
“That hasn’t been etched in stone yet. But for sure, one version is a straight pickup, another version is of a time jump, and we see it in flashbacks, what happened,” Binder says. “There’s some other things that dictate that choice that have yet to be decided, but probably we’ll just pick it up straight, is my guess.”
But what he did tell us was, “Clearly McGee’s son is in over his head, in some kind of trouble. We hope he’s in over his head; he certainly seems to be. You don’t want to think that he’s a mover and shaker of whatever malfeasance he’s involved in. He’s in over his head and McGee is clueless about it, but Torres is not. Torres is going to confront McGee’s son, and it’s going to end badly, but we just don’t know exactly how badly it ends. We know it’s like ‘Copacabana,’ where there’s blood and a single gunshot, but exactly who shot who is how we want to leave it. There’s no good version of that, but I think we’re going to have the surprising version of it.”
What we also need to watch for in Season 24 of NCIS is how Alden Parker will act without a strong director like Leon Vance in charge to keep him in line.
“I think the thing that you should pay the most attention to is what former Army CID Director Wayne Rogers (J. Paul Boehmer) said about Parker, which is, ‘You were always a bad seed. You’ve played cop for a while, but I know you, you’re a bad kid,” Binder says. “I’m not saying Parker’s a bad seed at all, but if you contrast Parker versus Gibbs, Gibbs was the opposite. Gibbs was this awe shucks, small town, true love, married-his-first-true-love kind of guy, and then he got broken, and in the breaking, he acted out in these ways that we came to know as Gibbs.
“But Parker’s sort of the opposite. He was in juvie when he was 14, and stealing hubcaps and stuff. That old saying, criminal or cop, well, he became a cop, but maybe he’s still a criminal. I don’t know, he’s a lot more complex than the chill vibe that Gary Cole exhibits most of the time as he plays the character. I think that’s a sign of his maturity, but does the leopard change its spots?”
Will Mark Harmon return to NCIS?
Parade spoke to Harmon last November when he reprised his role as Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs for an episode of NCIS: Origins, but it was a very brief scene.
He told us, “[NCIS: Origins co-showrunners] David [J. North] and Gina [Lucita Monreal] together came up with an idea that was fun and certainly somewhat surprising, and I just thought it was a good idea. I’ve enjoyed being part of the process with them over the last couple of years with Origins and trying to revisit all those things that I remember from the original when they first started, which was every bit as challenging and every bit as tough.”
But when pressed about a guest appearance on the mothership at some point, Harmon wouldn’t commit.
Related: NCIS: Origins: Mark Harmon Reveals Why He’s Returning as Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Exclusive)
When the series premiered, it was originally called Navy NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which was later shortened to NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and then, once everyone knew what NCIS stood for, the series simply became NCIS.
How to watch and stream NCIS Season 24 on TV and online
New episodes of NCIS will air Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CBS and stream next day on Paramount+.
Where can I catch up on previous seasons of NCIS?
Previous seasons of NCIS are available on Paramount+, Hulu, Netflix, and in reruns on USA Network.
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