Origins’ Boss on Gibbs’ ‘Proud of You’ to Tony, What Mark Harmon Added & More (Exclusive)

NCIS: Origins just delivered one of its best episodes as Mark Harmon‘s Gibbs reunited with Michael Weatherly‘s Tony in the present and Austin Stowell‘s younger version continued to build his relationship with Adam Campbell‘s Ducky in the past. It would be easy for the 1992 storyline to pale in comparison to the major reunion in 2026. And make no mistake, seeing Gibbs and Tony together is the highlight.

But the ‘90s story in this episode is an absolute delight as well, with the two timelines combining for what’s a heartwarming and fun hour. TV Insider spoke with showrunner David J. North about those reunions and more. Warning: Spoilers for NCIS: Origins Season 3 Episode 3 ahead!

In 2026, Tony joins Gibbs in the director’s (his new) office with — what else? — a bottle of bourbon, and the two take a moment to remember the late Leon Vance (Rocky Carroll) after catching up on the last 10 years. (No, they haven’t been in touch. North explained why that’s OK.) While Tony wants Jimmy (Brian Dietzen) to look him over since he’s been shot, Gibbs refuses because he’s supposed to be dead. After Tony goes off to dig into the fingerprint off Gibbs’ neck, his former boss takes a moment to take a photo of the two of them and Ducky (the late David McCallum) and set it on his desk. “I almost came to see you, Duck,” he says. “I wonder what you’d think of that.”

Well, Ducky would think the same thing that 1992 Ducky does about Franks’ (Kyle Schmid) team victim: “Oh my dear boy, it simply shouldn’t have been your time.” The ’90s story is, simply put, entertaining. Their victim was a gigolo, and to find his killer, Gibbs, off Lala’s (Mariel Molino) insistence that he’s predictable and that’s why Randy (Caleb Foote) is able to get the fact that they kissed out of him, decides to go undercover as one. Ducky Cyranos Gibbs, and it goes awry, of course, but Gibbs more than manages to hold his own — and impress Lala! But when she goes to him near the end of the episode, he’s the one to hold true to giving her the time she wanted.

To cap off the episode, back in 2026, Gibbs takes a moment in the morgue, with Tony joining him with a “not bad” impression of Ducky he’s been working on. Both acknowledge how much they miss the ME before Tony gives him the file on the tracker whose print was on Gibbs’ neck. He worked for the CIA, and Tony doubts he’s the shooter, but rather the shooter hired him to find him in the middle of nowhere. As for the second target, NCIS’ system was hacked a few weeks ago, and the person accessed all personnel files from the ’90s. They know Rule #39: There is no such thing as a coincidence.

Robert Voets/CBS

“I’m worried about you, Gibbs. You’ve been out of the game for a while. What else was it? Oh yeah, you’ve been shot,” Tony admits. Though Gibbs says he’s OK, Tony says he can’t do it alone. But Gibbs tells him, “The bravest people I’ve ever known are in this building. And they’re lucky to have you leading them, Tony.” With a handshake and a pat to his arm, Gibbs leaves him with, “I’m proud of you.” After he walks out, Tony says, “Take care, boss.”

We’d also be remiss if we didn’t highlight just how hilarious Franks’ interactions with Ducky’s mom Victoria are, especially her joining the team at the crime scene and staying out of the way (“Is that what you think you’re doing?”); Ducky’s reaction to hearing about his mother’s night out with Diany Rodriguez‘s Vera (“Please do not dance on the bar”); Randy’s utter delight to Gibbs going undercover as a gigolo (“He’d be expensive,” chimes in Marisa Baram’s Gail); Ducky’s insistence that DNA is sexy as he coaches Gibbs through the op; and Gibbs and Ducky heading out for lunch (“For me, Ducky would go on to play the role of the best friend a guy could ask for,” Harmon’s voiceover says).

Below, showrunner David J. North breaks down those key reunions for Gibbs.

There’s already something special about having Mark and Michael back on screen as Gibbs and Tony, but then you take it to another level with the references, the moments for Vance and Ducky, that photo. What were the musts of their reunion, and was there anything you wanted to include that you didn’t that you can share?

David J. North: Luckily, there was nothing that we didn’t get to include. We spent a lot of time writing those scenes. For me, I definitely wanted to include Vance. I think that was important to Mark as well as Rocky, and that character is such a bedrock of NCIS. And it’s so exciting to see Michael Weatherly back on the mothership, and to see DiNozzo in that office was strange at first for me, but very cool; somehow, it really felt right being there while we were shooting.

And to see Mark and Michael together again on set, for me as someone that this show, the franchise means so much to me. And to see those two together was really just special. It’s hard to describe, obviously, the chemistry that they have. It’s magic; it’s legendary TV that they’ve done at this point. They’re both titans and to be able to get them back on set together and things like that never come together easily. But Eric Christian Olsen, executive producer with me, was a big part of helping make that happen. And it was really a really special day, one I’ll never forget.

Yeah, they are so good together, and we see that with the back and forth especially, but also something that this highlights is how good they are in the moments of care and concern between the two characters. But this time it’s Tony towards Gibbs.

Yeah, it was a bit of a role reversal, which I thought was really interesting, and I tried to tie in thematically in the episode where Swanson [Hannah Barefoot] is asking Franks out and he’s uncomfortable with it and Ducky’s mom is going out with all these men and certainly even the role reversal of seeing Gibbs in a light that we never see him in as he goes undercover as a male gigolo. So it seemed fitting, but yeah, it was a reversal of sorts. And that’s why we held off until the very end, when Tony calls him “boss” at the very end is it’s just, I think he’s always boss to everyone. He’s always the father figure, but times change and that’s why, throughout the scenes until then, DiNozzo refers to him as Gibbs.

Talk about having that “I’m proud of you” line given the dynamic, especially in the early seasons, and also Gibbs’ last couple of sentences to Tony made me think of “Bounce” and “Flesh and Blood,” I have to say.

Wow, “Bounce,” that’s going way back! I remember writing that one when I was just a young whippersnapper.

It’s funny that that’s the line that you picked out because the starting point of this, that was the only line that we knew. Yes, we all knew as writers that that was the line we needed to get there. As a fan of the series, that’s what I wanted to hear. And look at what DiNozzo’s accomplished now and certainly in what we saw in the Tony & Ziva spinoff, and now for him to be back as director, Gibbs would have to be proud. He really brought DiNozzo up, and now he’s at the pinnacle of NCIS, which is pretty cool.

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Giving Gibbs those moments about Vance and Ducky made it clear that those are the two places that these scenes had to take place, but at any point did you consider having either scene elsewhere? Because it almost feels like too bad there wasn’t an elevator scene between them.

Well, no, I wanted to hit as many places as I could, so definitely have Gibbs alone in the elevator at the end of Episode 2, wanted to bring him through the squad room, but to me that felt more of a personal thing. I’m only speaking for me, not a conversation I had with Mark, but it felt more of a personal thing for Gibbs and for me personally for Mark. That’s a place that the character Gibbs and Mark, the actor, spent 18 years really on that set, most of the hours on that set. So I really thought it would be special to see just Mark walking through there alone.

But no, listen, DiNozzo’s director now, so I wanted to meet in that office. But that also gave me a wonderful opportunity to pay tribute to Vance, which I knew would be really special for Mark, again, because just Mark’s relationship with Rocky and his relationship with the character of Vance, he couldn’t go in that office without giving a toast to a great life for Vance, as he says. But I think really for Mark there, he’s saying to Rocky, “Wow, what an incredible run and a job well done.”

So Gibbs puts that photo of himself, Tony, and Ducky on Tony’s desk. I’m trying to place where that photo was from. Is that from Season 5?

So that photo came from when, once we had this on the page, I called Mark Horowitz, who was executive producer of NCIS for many, many years, starting the beginning. In fact, goes way back to JAG. And Mark is a wonderful, wonderful photographer and took many photos over the years. And that photo came from him, but I’m not sure if there wasn’t photoshopping done in some way or not. I don’t know what season, one of the earlier seasons, but it originated with the great Mark Horowitz.

Is that something we’re now going to see on NCIS? Was there a conversation with Steven Binder about that?

Yes, I actually did talk with Steven, and I don’t know where he’ll land with that, but I didn’t want to make them have to do anything that they didn’t want to do as far as what photos were. So the script, it’s written that Mark picks the photo up and just looks at it in the moving box. But Mark being Mark, he kind of does whatever he wants, and so he stuck it on the desk. [Laughs] So it’s Steve’s problem to deal with now, whether they want that photo there or not. That was not in the script, but Mark makes Mark choices and I dare anyone on that set to go tell him no.

So the “one to go” — Tony brings up the hack of personnel files from the ‘90s. So can you confirm that means the “one to go “worked at NIS/NCIS in the ‘90s?

Yes. Breaking news, Meredith!

Anything else you can say?

No, don’t want to say anything more than that, but yes, the second target is someone from NIS/NCIS.

Should we be expecting these big reunions for Gibbs every episode? And in general, what did you want to do with bringing these characters back into Gibbs’ life?

It was mainly driven by the story. I mean, Mark did this because I pitched him a story that he liked, and obviously he can’t be every week with our folks from Origins, and the people that we saw him with on the mothership are really important to him. So really, I just sat down as we, as writers, were working on the story and figuring out who creatively, would he call? What would he need? And of course, the first one was DiNozzo, and we’ll see what happens from there.

Robert Voets/CBS

Will we see Gibbs and Tony together again this season on Origins or NCIS?

We will not see them together again on Origins, but Tony really played a big part in helping move Gibbs’ story forward in figuring this out. I think definitely Tony’s still there for him if Gibbs needs to call on him. As far as the mothership, I’ll leave that be.

Yet another perfect transition from the 2026 story to the ’90s with Gibbs’ “I almost came to see you, Duck. I wonder what you think of that,” and Ducky’s remark to the dead body. Did you always know that Gibbs’ reunions with Ducky and Tony would be in the same episode?

Yes. And the reason we did that was because, just to speak honestly, was hoping we’d have some even new viewers that would want to see maybe that weren’t still watching or hadn’t checked out Origins yet. And with the new viewers, I wanted to give them something they were comfortable with and someone they love, which is Adam Campbell’s young Ducky. I love him, too. And so, just in picking which episodes would be where, I really thought that was a nice fit in seeing Mark and Michael back together.

First of all, loved Randy getting the kiss out of Gibbs. That entire sequence was great. And Gibbs and Lala are both clearly tempted at the end there, but now he’s doing the mature thing and making sure she gets the time that she asked for. Also loved Vlad (Eric Balfour) taking them to the Romance aisle in Blockbuster.

[Laughs] Yeah.

How many more moments like that are coming for Gibbs and Lala?

As far as where they’re at, that’s just more the natural progression, I think, of what’s happening in their relationship, with each of these episodes being about roughly a week apart from each other in our timeline as well. I’ll say this, that things are — I know it sort of feels like now that it’s, okay, we brought them close together and now it’s going to be this long drawn out thing that you’re maybe used to seeing on these procedurals and it’s not going to happen that way. Their story is progressing for good or bad.

I love how you’ve been building Ducky into the show because yes, it’s about showing the bond between Gibbs and Ducky on NCIS, but it’s also about seeing how well he works with the team. And he just fits so well with them in the ’90s, just from that first scene with him in this episode. And then you bring in his mom and everything with Franks and Ducky’s mom, Victoria, was just so good. Talk about bringing her back into the fold.

I mean, she, of course, had some awesome episodes in The Mothership, so we just thought this could be really fun and a character like that with Franks. I’m always looking at how Franks would react to the different characters, especially the ones from the past. But yeah, we just thought it could be really fun. And as writing Ducky, the intro episodes to him where we’re seeing him really be introduced to the team, it’s now getting to be a little bit more comfortable for him and for them, so you really see him fit in as the unit.

Are we going to see him again this season?

No, we do not see him again this season with the shortened season, so no.

Is he referenced?

Yes, he is referenced. We reference Ducky a lot.

Gibbs undercover and every single moment that resulted from that — Gibbs choosing the suit that Lala liked, Cyrano with Ducky, Franks closing Lala’s mouth, that nice little moment there, which also, Franks and Lala is an underrated relationship —

I agree. I agree. Yeah, I love when she’s… Because to me, I really love writing this stuff with them where, especially him and his relationship stuff with Swanson, where there’s more of that this season where he sort of goes to her or Mary Jo [Tyla Abercrumbie] to talk about his own love life. And I really like that about him.

— even Mona being a redhead, that little nod, everything was gold with that. That, Gibbs and Randy’s conversation, having Ducky and Victoria, it feels like we’re getting a lighter Gibbs this season with stuff like that. Why?

I just think we’ve moved further away from this horrible, obviously, tragedy that he experienced. We’re a couple of years away from that now, and people, we go through horrible things in life, but then we need to move on, and I think he’s no different, and so we’re getting to see a little bit more of that personality, seeing him become a leader, which is fun to write, but also it’s different. Your life and your work is different before you are the leader and before you have all the responsibility. So I think he’s a little lighter than even the Mark Harmon we saw over the years.

NCIS: Origins, Tuesdays, 10/9c, CBS