Origins’ Bosses on Gibbs Meeting Diane, Finale Cliffhanger, More (Exclusive)

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the NCIS: Origins Season 1 finale “Cecilia.”]

The NCIS: Origins Season 1 finale, which aired on Monday, April 28, ended with a shocking cliffhanger: the possible death of one of the NIS agents! It also introduced a character who will play a significant role in Gibbs’ (Austin Stowell) future.

We see what we knew about from NCIS: Lara Macy (Claire Berger on Origins, Louise Lombard on the mothership) investigating Pedro Hernandez’s murder and Gibbs’ role in it. But Lala (Mariel Molino) uses her friendship with Macy to convince the other woman to drop her case, with the fact that she knew — and lying about how much and when she did. On her way to tell Gibbs what she did, she’s in a crash, with her car flipping over. She “was coming to tell me she had saved me. I would only find out later what she did for me. But that’s not what made me love her. I loved her all along. I still do,” Mark Harmon‘s Gibbs says in voiceover. Meanwhile, Gibbs is at his old house, packing up, when the real estate agent walks in … and it’s none other than his future ex-wife, Diane (Kathleen Kenny)!

Below, co-showrunners David J. North and Gina Lucita Monreal break down the finale and tease what’s ahead in Season 2. (Plus, read a deep dive on the finale with Austin Stowell here.)

Is Lala dead? Because that voiceover and then also the exchange that Gibbs has with Nate (Peter Cambor) in the “Legends” backdoor pilot kind of make it seem like she is dead.

David J. North: Going into this project, Gina and I knew we wanted to take big swings. Amy Reisenbach at the network has just been so supportive, everyone at the network and David Stapf at the studio. Mariel, the whole cast knew what we were doing, that we were going to take big swings and they just show up every day and are willing to do the work at an exceptional level. And all that said, tune into Season 2 to see Lala’s fate.

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How is Gibbs going to react no matter what happens? Because it could be another loss, or, even if she lives, this could be the end of her NIS career, and he’s lost so much. The deaths of Shannon and Kelly are fresh, Ruth is still fresh, everything that’s happened to him… So what can you say about how Gibbs is going to handle whatever is going on with Lala?

Gina Lucita Monreal: I think no matter what happens with Lala, it’s definitely going to send shockwaves through the team. They’re all so close, they mean so much to each other. So no matter what, this is going to have an effect. But at the same time, we always want to be careful that we are embracing the humor that is in the DNA of the show and in the franchise, so we will do that in Season 2. We’ll dig into their feelings as we always do, but we’ll find the lighter side as well.

In Mark Harmon’s voiceover, he says he loved Lala all along and still does. So talk about adding that to Gibbs’ story, both in Origins‘ present and then for the future with that still does part of it.

North: I’m interested in this answer from Gina. I read this just with everybody else, so let me hear what was behind this.

Monreal: It’s always a challenge to take those three — because really it is three different timelines, right? It’s the one that we’re seeing in the ‘90s on Origins. It’s the one on the mothership, what he actually knew and encountered when he met up with Lara Macy there. And then it’s the Gibbs that we saw at the beginning of our show, of our premiere when he’s in the Alaskan wilderness. And to me, there’s nothing more meaningful than the passage of time. That enables us to see this Gibbs character in this sort of 360 that we haven’t been able to see before. That’s what has been so liberating about that voiceover where we get to be inside this character’s head who really has had walls up the entire time that we’ve seen him. And so a line like that, that he still loves her, I think comes across so powerfully because it’s something that I don’t think he would ever say out loud. And so you’re really getting in a window into who this character is in all these other facets that we’ve never seen before.

Why didn’t they kiss in the pool?

Monreal: We talked a lot about whether they should kiss. We know that they both really wanted to. Ultimately, it came down to the fact that Gibbs has this huge news to tell her, which is, I turned over my rifle. It’s life-altering for both of them really. And it wouldn’t have been a truthful moment if he had let that happen without sharing that news with her. And so we felt like it was really true to the character, who Gibbs is as a human being, his morals, his beliefs, that he might give into that feeling. But then ultimately he can’t do that to her. He has to come clean and put all the information out there.

Talk about introducing Diane and what you wanted to do with that scene with her and Gibbs, given what we know about them.

Monreal: We know in canon that Diane shows up now in our timeline. It comes at such a crazy moment because of what is happening with him and Lala, and I think that’s reflective of life. You’re not looking for anything to happen, and suddenly, it happens. So we know, as you said, what happens with Diane and Gibbs, that they do get married. We knew that we owed that to canon, to the audience, to introduce that character at that time. A lot of times in the room will realize these things, “Oh, in canon we have to do this at this moment,” and it feels like a huge hurdle or a huge roadblock because we wanted Gibbs to do this or that. But what we’ve found is that these hurdles or these things that we are tied to in canon really a lot of times turn out to be better, more interesting stories. And I think that this is a great example of that.

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How much are you planning on having her be part of Season 2? Recurring? Series regular?

North: We have a lot of open runway on Season 2.

Monreal: There’ll be a presence in Season 2.

Franks (Kyle Schmid) questions Lala’s loyalty, then we see her show just how loyal she is and how far she’s willing to go for Gibbs with the lies that she tells Macy. Why is she willing to put herself on the line like that? How much is it how much she loves Gibbs and how much is it something else?

Monreal: To me, it’s two things. It’s one, that she loves him, right, that’s the bottom line. But two, it’s who she is as a human being. And I think that’s why it’s so hurtful to her that Franks suspects her of this because that’s not who she is and he’s not seeing who she is. And she has been on his team for these years and in that moment she realizes, you still don’t see who I am.

That scene was so good — Lala versus Franks, yelling at each other.

North: We did that as a oner, meaning we tried to get it all at once, and it was really about production and trying to make our day. And I think that was take eight. But it was really a cool thing to watch, those two go at each other, and it’s one of my favorite scenes of the season.

Gibbs bringing in the wood and tools, Jackson (Robert Taylor) suggesting some kind of ceremony for his family since he missed the burial… Are we about to see at least his first attempt at a boat?

Monreal: [Laughs] I think in the previous episode we realized why Gibbs doesn’t like therapy, right? It seems like he was having these breakthroughs, it was actually working, and then suddenly, the rug is pulled with what happened with Luke. And so in the finale here, we see him sort of struggling again with how to find that outlet for his own mental health. And that’s when the wood comes in. He tells Jackson that he’s not quite sure what he’s building yet. But yes, this is our introduction to him using woodwork as a form of therapy, which as we know ultimately ends up with a boat in his basement.

Franks gets a call from his brother; they’re clearly estranged. What can you say about that relationship and the conversations they need to and might have?

Monreal: So we set up this amazing relationship with Franks and his brother Mason. We saw the ties between these two characters. We see them go off to Vietnam, and then we skipped to the end of the story where Mason is calling Franks. There’s obviously some sort of fallout that has happened between the two of them. We absolutely owe that story to the audience, and we’re excited to tell it. What happened in Vietnam, what happened that makes Frank say, “I don’t have a brother,” and how are these two going to interact with each other in the present are all questions that we’re excited to get into in Season 2.

North: And the one thing we know about Franks, everybody does, is that he’s loyal to the core. He’s not always the most politically correct. He’s not always the easiest guy to be around, but he is loyal. So whatever happened between him and his brother to where he has absolutely no relationship with Mason, that’s the story we’re excited to dig into.

What can you say about who will be back in Season 2? Randy’s (Caleb Foote) future in the field is in question, you have Wheeler (Patrick Fischler) on administrative leave. Are we going to see anyone leaving between seasons definitely?

North: I will say that Gina and I are always kicking these ideas around. We’re always revising, and there’s never been once in the first season that we’ve looked at each other and said, “You know what? There’s too much Randy in that episode,” so there’s going to be plenty of Randy, I promise you. And all of these actors, we just pinch ourselves. They’re so phenomenal. The characters have really come to life. Sometimes when Gina writes especially, I’ll get these scripts and they just pop off the page. We’re excited to see everyone and come back and find out the fate of Lala as well.

Monreal: We’re definitely going to be digging more into [Wheeler’s] story. We left a lot of questions surrounding that character. We love that character. So he will be a presence in Season 2.

Can you say if there are any significant new characters you’re talking about introducing, whether it’s completely new characters or other younger versions like Fornell (Lucas Dixon) and Macy?

North: We’re always open to that. We know how exciting that is for the fans and Gina and I as NCIS fans ourselves, it’s exciting for us. So we’re always looking at that and it’s definitely possible. People can stop writing me and asking for Jenny Shepard. I’m aware that she’s out there, and Gina. I know the young Fornell and that actor was incredible, so we have a lot of fun with that as well. So we’re looking forward to seeing what we come up with.

Do you have plans to bring back young Fornell yet?

North: I definitely would love to see more young Fornell.

Monreal: Fornell is difficult to bring back because of canon, but we love him and we love that actor. We think he just nailed it.

One of my favorite relationships to see play out is Gibbs and Jackson’s because we didn’t know about this part of their history. How are you figuring out how much to explore there, given what we know about their future?

Monreal: We love the Jackson character. We know that after there’s a proper funeral, they don’t talk. That’s canon, and we’re prepared to adhere to that. But we also know that in our timeline, they haven’t had a proper funeral yet. So we love bringing that character back. The dynamic between those two is just incredible. So until we get to that point in canon, we’re always open to bringing that character back.

Gibbs right now is more emotional than we ever see him in the future. What are the conversations you’re having about bringing him towards that more stoic part? Are the events that happened in the penultimate episode playing a role in that because he’s not going to want to go back to the support group and open up like that again?

North: We’re edging him toward that. Gina and I wrote obviously Mark Harmon’s Gibbs for years, and that’s the direction that we’re taking Austin’s Gibbs. Even from an investigative standpoint, we learned in this season that young Gibbs really had a gut feeling that maybe there was more to this Sandman story, the Bugs story, but he really didn’t follow up on it too much. He didn’t trust his gut, and in the end, he was right. So these are all learning experiences that are pushing young Gibbs toward the Gibbs that we’ve known for so long.

Talk about bringing in Macy and having that scene with her and Gibbs, him getting angry and slamming the hand down and seeing that emotion out of him.

Monreal: That scene was really fun to write because there was just a little bit of it in canon, right? We knew that she didn’t go easy on him and that he was upset because he felt like she was bringing up his family. And so we had those parameters. And to see those two actors play that scene out, it was just phenomenal. It wasn’t written in there that he hits the table, was it? I can’t remember if I wrote that in there or if he just did it.

North: I don’t know, but I do know that behind the scenes sitting there that day, what’s in the final cut, he slammed his hand and it didn’t sound good, and his hand was shaking. And so then I went into him and said, “Don’t hit the table anymore. We’ve got that and you’re going to hurt yourself.” And the very next take, he hit the table again. So he only knew how to do it one way, and it was really just, he was all in. That’s also one of my favorite scenes of the season.

NCIS: Origins, Season 2, TBA, CBS