CBS’s Risky Decision Is Redefining The Future Of NCIS

Published Oct 20, 2026, 10:00 PM EDT

Cher Thompson is a Senior Staff Writer at Screen Rant, where she covers everything from explosive reality TV moments to cast interviews about the twists and turns of scripted dramas. With a background in creative writing, marketing, and teaching, Cher knows how to spot both the storytelling genius and the guilty pleasures in pop culture. Her work blends wit with insight, making readers feel like they’re chatting with a friend who just happens to know way too much about TV.

NCIS has been taking big risks this season, but with the 2026-27 network TV cycle having started off strong, the long-standing CBS franchise has found its chances paying off tremendously. Although the franchise started off small with just the flagship series in 2003, NCIS made a name for itself as a franchise through the years. With the additions of NCIS: Los Angeles in 2009, a successful series that ran for 14 seasons on CBS, and NCIS: New Orleans in 2014, which ran for 7 seasons of its own, the franchise was able to grow, building an identity across its shows.

With New Orleans ending in 2021 and Los Angeles ending in 2023, the franchise has had a bit of a struggle throughout the past few years. While both of the initial spinoffs came to a close, other shows were brought to the table, like NCIS: Hawai'i, that didn't manage to find their audience with ease. At the same time, the flagship series went through some massive change as Mark Harmon, who played Leroy Jethro Gibbs, longtime leader of the team, departed from the series and changed the foundation of the original show. With change in the air, the NCIS franchise needed to adapt.

Slowly but surely, NCIS has added new shows that have been pushing the boundaries constructed by the initial shows in the CBS franchise. With the additions of NCIS: Sydney, NCIS: Origins, and most recently, NCIS: New York, the franchise has been able to lean into risk and reinvent itself. Its newest series, starring LL Cool J and Scott Caan, proves that the CBS franchise has redefined its own future.

NCIS: New York Is Self-Assured And Confident, Even Early On

Although it's only three episodes into NCIS: New York's run, the series has come out strong with a clear, confident, self-assured stretch of episodes that have made an impact. Establishing its central characters quickly, NCIS: New York benefits from the fact that LL Cool J's Sam Hanna is one of the focal points. Having been an integral part of NCIS: Los Angeles, Sam's return to his hometown of New York isn't necessarily planned, but it makes narrative sense and brings him back into the fold of a new team. The show's characters all feel unique and lived in, including Caan's Nick Schaffer, whose partnership with Sam is easy to fall into.

With the foundation of a world that feels established, NCIS: New York is quick to ensure that viewers know it means business. With high-intensity cases that see the officers running around the city, the series is lively and fun, but has a serious element to it as it moves through each week's case. It never feels like a traditional procedural in the way past NCIS shows have, instead adopting an urgency that makes it feel more like a prestige drama than any of the shows in the franchise before it.

The confidence that NCIS: New York has projected is exciting, pointing toward a new era for the franchise that puts emphasis on all the right things.

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NCIS: New York's Fast-Paced Stories & Nuanced Characters Should Be The Blueprint

While all of the NCIS shows have had different looks and feels, they've all followed a similar blueprint since the beginning. NCIS: Sydney, even though it's an international version of the show that doesn't follow a US-based team, and NCIS: Origins, though it's primarily based in the past, both have similar structures to the flagship series, but NCIS: New York feels like a whole different show. While it still follows the procedural nature of the flagship series, New York has quickly fallen into a space where the stories are fast-paced, and the characters are nuanced, which creates a lived-in feel.

Leaning into the lived-in feeling of the New York team, even for Sam who just joined it, allows NCIS: New York to feel like it's further along than its third episode. This connection could mean New York will be a model for future shows within the franchise, which could pull from past shows in order to build different teams, or could use backdoor pilots in the same way the past shows have to establish new characters before a spinoff comes into play. The newest addition to the NCIS franchise has been able to refresh things quickly, and should see others following its lead.