NCIS fans deeply miss Mark Harmon as Leroy Jethro Gibbs. Harmon joined the series when it debuted in 2003, and he played Gibbs for 19 seasons before leaving the series completely. He’s undoubtedly missed among NCIS lovers, and they hope for his return to the show at some point. So, should NCIS fans give up hope that they’ll see Harmon return? Here’s his one condition that could convince him to rejoin.
Mark Harmon may return to ‘NCIS’ for the ‘right story’
Mark Harmon said farewell to NCIS in season 19, episode 4, “Great Wide Open.” Leroy Jethro Gibbs is certainly missed, as there’s no other character like him in the series. So, is there any chance that fans could see Harmon return to the small screen for more NCIS in the future?
According to executive producer Steven D. Binder, Harmon might return if a compelling story brings him back. Otherwise, we shouldn’t expect to see the grand return of Gibbs anytime soon.
“There’s always head space for him to come back,” Binder shared with TV Insider in May 2022. “It just has to be the right story, I think, to get him excited about it and to get us excited about it. It’s a card to play, and I don’t think we want to play it cheaply. I think when we do play it, it really needs to be the right thing.”
The timeline of filming NCIS might also mean that Harmon could rejoin the series and fans would still wait months to see Gibbs back in action. “And we work on a different timeline than other shows,” Binder added. “Other shows maybe have a year or two, or they don’t know how much time they’re gonna have. We just, for rightly or wrongly, operate on a much longer time scale for these things than other shows do.”
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As of 2022, Binder wasn’t in a hurry to create new storylines for Gibbs. “I feel like we left Gibbs in this magical place …,” he said. ” … I saw him in a river, happy, which I never see him as, smiling with a knife in his pocket and fish in the boat. That’s how I imagine him, and that’s how I want to keep imagining him.”
When will ‘NCIS’ return in 2023?
NCIS fans have more to miss than just Mark Harmon. Season 21 of the show didn’t return with CBS’s fall lineup in September 2023 due to the SAG-AFTRA strike. And it’s also not slated to return anytime in 2023. This likely means fans must wait until 2024 before NCIS returns with new episodes.
That said, fans shouldn’t fret too much, as NCIS: Sydney premieres on CBS on Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2023. “With rising international tensions in the Indo-Pacific, a brilliant and eclectic team of U.S. NCIS agents and the Australian Federal Police (AFP) are grafted into a multinational task force to keep naval crimes in check in the most contested patch of ocean on the planet,” the series description reads. DC’s Legends of Tomorrow star Olivia Swann and Home and Away star Todd Lasance lead the new show as special agent Michelle Mackey and Sergeant Jim “J.D.” Dempsey.
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