The story of Pedro Hernandez is such a large part of the fabric of NCIS. There’s so much information that wasn’t revealed in the original series about how the events unfolded in which Leroy Jethro Gibbs assassinated the man that killed his family – and got away with it -- that it’s a goldmine for the prequel, NCIS Origins, to excavate.And that’s just what showrunners David J. North and Gina Lucita Monreal have done in Season 1. First with the “Vivo o Muerto” episode, detailing how Gibbs found Hernandez, with a little help from his team, and shot him. Now they’ve wrapped the season with the “Cecilia” episode in which a friend of Lala’s (Mariel Molino), Lara Macy (Claire Berger), learned of the murder and decided to investigate the crime to promote her career, meaning Gibbs (Austin Stowell) could face a reckoning.
“In this finale, we've got detail after detail about what actually happened. And, of course, now injecting this other character Lala, who we've never known about [in NCIS], and we learn that she actually was the one to save Gibbs,” North tells Parade. “Really at the end of this, my takeaway is, if it weren't for Lala, the world would have never met Leroy Jethro Gibbs. He wouldn't have been an agent; he would have been looking at a life in prison and Gibbs wouldn't have ever gone to prison.”
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We already knew Gibbs had considered taking his life once before. So we have Lala to thank for his continued existence and his longtime career as a NCIS agent, who married three more times after the death of his beloved wife Shannon.
What the “Cecilia” episode – Lala’s birth name – really investigates, though, is who Lala is as a woman and what she meant to Gibbs. Gibbs says, “This is a story I don't tell because I can't find the words.” And that may be because it’s too painful. Origins ended its first season with a major cliffhanger. Lala, on her way to tell Gibbs the bargain she made with Lara Macy to save him, had a fiery car crash, which was so severe, it’s hard to imagine she survived.
“You should not assume that, but the fact is, going into this project, Gina and I knew we wanted to take big swings,” North says. “The cast knew that, Mariel, all of them, knew that. The network has been incredibly supportive in letting us do this more as streaming-for-broadcast and everybody knows that anything can happen in any given week. “
The NCIS: Origins Season 1 finale left us with several cliffhangers and a lot to unpack, so we Zoomed with Monreal, who wrote the episode, and North to get their take on the finale.
Related: NCIS: Origins Reveals The Secret Behind Gibbs' Killing of Pedro Hernandez
We all know about Gibbs’ women: wives Shannon, Diane, Rebecca and Stephanie, and his lady friends Samantha Ryan and Hollis Mann. But we never heard about Lala before the beginning of Origins. Why is that?Gina Lucita Monreal: We're not done getting to know him yet. So I think that as we see him progress, we're going to see other sides of his character and all of these things that he's saying in the voiceover and that we're seeing in present day in 1992 will start to converge and come together and become the Gibbs that we know and love from the mothership.
Austin Stowell, Mariel MolinoCourtesy: CBS
A year has passed since Origins started in 1991. Lala and Gibbs have an almost kiss in the pool in the finale, but he pulls back. Did he pull back because it's still too soon, even though he's been a widower for a year?Gina: No, in my mind, I feel like he was ready. He wanted to kiss her, and she wanted to kiss him. But it was this big piece of news that is there between them like a wall. The fact that he turned over his rifle and, basically just sacrificed himself and his life as a free man. So, I think for him to go through with that kiss, it would have been disingenuous. She wouldn't have had all the information. And, I think, in his heart of hearts, he knows that she's not going to react well to that, and so because of the man he is, because of the morality that is true to that character, he had to tell her that first.
Claire BergerPhoto: Sonja Flemming/CBS
With Lala out of commission, does Lara Macy revisit Pedro Hernandez, or did Lala have time before the crash to put in a good word with Regional Director Ron Barrett (Toby Huss) for her to join NIS?Gina: Lara Macy is a really interesting character for our team to bounce off of. We are tied to canon with Lara Macy. We know that eventually she goes on to run the L.A. NCIS office, and we've seen that first encounter with her and Gibbs after many years and that it was very cold. So we are going to stick to canon as far as Lara Macy. In a lot of ways, our hands are tied with what kinds of stories we could tell with her.
Related: NCIS: Origins Star Austin Stowell Reveals the Personal Tragedy He Used to Get Inside Gibbs’ Head
Since we’re in 1992 now, it seems Gibbs is healing a little bit. When his father comes, he's actually OK about selling the house. Is it the vet group that he's going to? What do you think has mellowed him out to get him to this point?Gina: I think with the vet group, we're seeing the groundwork of why he doesn't like therapy, why he doesn't believe in it, why he's so against it in the mothership. It was starting to work for him; he was starting to really let that in, and then the rug gets pulled out from under him. So, in the beginning of the finale, we see him looking for that inner peace in another way, and that's when you see him trying to do the puzzles as he did with Ruth (London Garcia), then, ultimately, going to bring those planks of wood in. So, we're laying the groundwork again for the Gibbs that we know from the mothership, how he internalizes things, how he deals with things.
Courtesy: CBS
Because he's willing to sell the house, the real estate agent comes in and it's Diane (Kathleen Kenny), wife No. 2. I was surprised to find out that he actually met her in San Diego instead of in Washington, D.C. and he has the line, "my future collided with me." Will there be more of Diane in Season 2, or we're just meeting her now and that's a tease?Gina: She will be a presence in Season 2. We're still pretty open about the stories for Season 2, but yes, she will be a presence. We're going to stick to canon. We know that he marries Diane, and we're sticking to the years that we know that he was married to her, so we're always keeping an eye on that and figuring out how to build our stories around those points that we already know.
The little girl Grace that causes Lala to crash, does she play a role later on?Gina: No. The whole story is about lives colliding. These things that happen that are out of our control and out of our line of vision. So she's just a little girl that was playing with her dog and threw her ball in the street, and her life collided with Lala. The same happens with all of us.
Related: NCIS: Origins Star Kyle Schmid Previews a Post-Vietnam Flashback for Franks (Exclusive)
Mike Franks’ (Kyle Schmid) brother calls him with this cryptic message: “This is not an olive branch. I need to talk to you about Nam.” We met the brother earlier in this season. Will he be coming back for Season 2, and is there a mystery here to unpack?Gina: We don't know what happened between these two brothers who went off to Vietnam close as can be and came back, and now Franks says he doesn't even have a brother. So, something happened there that came between them. We definitely owe that story, and we're excited to tell it.
Kyle SchmidPhoto: Sonja Flemming/CBS
David J. North: Think about how loyal Franks is. He's loyal to his core, to everyone around him, so what could possibly have happened to have no relationship with his own brother. We’re excited to dig into that story in Season 2.
Another cliffhanger is Cliff Wheeler. He's on suspension. Will we at least see Cliff again to find out what's happening with him?David: Absolutely. We've not seen the last of Cliff Wheeler. We've loved that character. We adore Patrick Fischler, who plays Wheeler. And we are going to dig much, much more into Wheeler's character and his relationship with Noah Oakley (DaJuan Johnson), all of that.
Caleb FootePhoto: Sonja Flemming/CBS
Randy (Caleb Foote) seems to have been changed by his experience going down to Mexico and being confronted by Flaco's (Scotty Tovar) men. Will Randy get to keep his job? Barrett seemed to think that the fact that he was even asking about future changes meant that he shouldn't be in the field.David: Barrett did that, too. Barrett’s a real as. "There’s too much Randy in that episode," was said by no one ever that's watched this show. So we're going to have plenty of Randy in Season 2. Again, we're excited to see exactly how that takes shape, but lots of Randy. Caleb is phenomenal.
NCIS: Origins airs Monday nights at 10 p.m. ET/PT on CBS. Streams next day on Paramount+ and has already been picked up for its second season.
Next, Prequel Series NCIS: Origins Is Coming Back for Season 2 This Fall
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