It sounds like NCIS should be very interesting when it returns this fall and reveals who was shot after Special Agent Nick Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) called his teammate Timothy McGee’s (Sean Murray) son Mateo (Patrick Keleher) out on shady behavior and someone fired a gun. The Season 24 premiere will reveal who was shot and by whom. (We have theories.)
“To be honest, I don’t think we figured that one out yet,” Valderrama told People. “I don’t think we have an idea yet. I asked, ‘What do we want from it,’ but I will tell you that someone does get hit and people might not like it.”
He added that he expects “a major, major shakeup” as a result. “Next season, there’s some major changes and there are some major additions. What does that mean for Torres? I can only hope that he makes it out alive,” he said.
That’s similar to what Valderrama told TV Insider when he stopped by near the end of Season 23 to discuss the major events of the penultimate episode, which saw Alden Parker (Gary Cole) and Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon, who left in Season 19 and did not appear) team up to take out one of the major players of the operation that led to Director Leon Vance’s (Rocky Carroll) murder in the 500th episode.
Valderrama noted that Torres “was thrilled [to be] drawing outside the lines in the last two episodes,” explaining, “That’s really where he thrives the most. That’s really where he wants to live. I would say for Torres, you’re going to see that being a common theme in the next season as well. We’re building towards something pretty big with this character.”
Executive producer Steven D. Binder did tell us after the Season 23 finale that while someone was shot, he did “rule out” someone dying. “I sort of had my fill this season, all of us, of killing people,” he said.
In addition to telling us there will be “a big shakeup” for NCIS Season 24, Valderrama had told us the finale’s last scene “leaves you going, ‘Oh, something horrible just happened, and we’re going to have to wait until the season premiere.’ It’s paid off in a really great way and we have an amazing plan and Episode 1 of Season 24 is going to make people’s brains explode because it doesn’t just pick up where it left off, it kicks off with, let’s just say, new elements.”
Robert Voets/CBS
Torres was the one to pick up on something going on with Mateo; though the 18-year-old had said NCIS wasn’t for him, he was spotted at a workstation, supposedly filling out an application for a cyber internship. When Torres confronted Mateo, and before the gunshot, McGee’s son worried that “they could be watching.”
What’s your theory about how Season 24 will kick off? Let us know in the comments section below.