Amid all of the too-soon cancellations and tasks being shelved in mid-production, CBS’ long-running NCIS is seemingly displaying no indicators of primetime fatigue greater than a yr after its former star Mark Harmon made his extremely publicized exit as Leroy Gibbs. The spinoff-sparking drama is celebrating the uncommon hallmark of reaching 450 episodes with Monday evening’s installment, which naturally means the showrunner has been tasked with addressing the opportunity of Gibbs making a stoic return in a roundabout way, form, or type.
Season 20 kicked off final September with a significant blow to viewers who had been holding out hope for Gibbs to recur, with its newly revised opening credit sequence taking Mark Harmon out of competition after he’d remained within the combine all through the prior season. Regardless of that, showrunner Steven D. Binder was requested concerning the actor’s potential to return no less than another time earlier than the flagship drama is wrapped for good. Right here’s how he answered, in response to TV Insider:
I don’t see how we don’t see him another time sooner or later. Gibbs has, in my thoughts, superior to a better airplane of existence for now—I don’t wish to place him in an house in Anchorage or wherever. We left him smiling on a river glad, and that’s the picture I would like folks to have till we’re actually able to blow that out of the water or actually embrace it in a roundabout way.
The NCIS inventive workforce properly selected to ship Gibbs off into the sundown in a non-fatal method, which not solely allowed for appearances down the road, but additionally averted what would possible have been an enormous fan backlash. The character was despatched off to Alaska with McGee, the place he selected to stay it out versus heading again to Washington D.C. It might not have been the decision that everybody needed, however it’s the one which clicked with Binder and Harmon, because it gave the long-stressed character a brand new setting, a brand new life, and a newly established peace of thoughts.
As such, bringing the character again into the fold so quickly would run the danger of cheapening his choice to go away his duties as an agent behind. Which may not be such an enormous deal to the typical fan who doesn’t care within the slightest how it will occur, as long as it occurred. However for everybody concerned with setting that exit up, from Steven D. Binder to Mark Harmon himself, it’s going to presumably take an enormous and unexpectedly significant concept to persuade them to both carry Gibbs again from the Final Frontier, or to ship the workforce as much as Alaska.
Not one to spend oodles of time participating in press interviews, Mark Harmon has remained roughly silent on leaving NCIS ever because it occurred, talking about it on the whole phrases for the present’s Season 19 DVD set, however not a lot elsewhere. That’s presumably to keep away from addressing the damaging publicity that happened years prior when his former co-star Pauley Perrette shared stunning allegations concerning the actor and others after she selected to go away the CBS drama. In fact, he could not like doing interviews.
Talking of Perrette, NCIS followers have additionally questioned if Abby Sciuto may ever make a return, with Binder having beforehand shared the inventive workforce’s want to reference Abby extra by means of different characters’ conversations. To this point, there’s been no signal of both her or Michael Weatherly’s former agent Tony DiNozzo, however right here’s hoping we don’t have to attend till Episode 500 to see that occur.
