NCIS: Origins Confirms Season 3 Will Answer The Prequel’s Biggest Question

Published Sep 24, 2026, 10:26 PM EDT

Adam has been writing in the entertainment news space for over a decade. Beginning his career of covering film and TV at CinemaBlend, he has also appeared on The Flash Podcast and done several radio spots. 

The biggest question that's been attached to NCIS: Origins since it premiered will finally be answered in season 3.

In 2024, CBS launched Origins to chronicle Leroy Jethro Gibbs’ first years in what was originally NIS. While there are a handful of other characters from the original NCIS that appear in the prequel, most notably Mike Franks and Vera Strickland, it’s primarily comprised of new characters, like Lala Dominguez, who’s formed a close bond with Austin Stowell’s younger Gibbs. Yet, Lala was never mentioned in the flagship series, and at the end of Origins’ two-part premiere, Mark Harmon’s older Gibbs narrated that the story he’s recounting is “about her.”

While speaking with TV Insider, NCIS: Origins showrunner David J. North confirmed that audiences “will find out this season why Gibbs has never mentioned Lala.” This revelation follows four months after the Origins season 2 finale ended with Lala and Gibbs finally kissing. While NCIS fans know that the former won’t become one of the latter’s future wives, season 3 will finally shed light on what happened between them. Harmon additionally teased:

Some of that obviously will be defined in the storyline. [The way Gibbs] was written, [there was] so much you didn’t know about. There was a lot of darkness in that character.

Along with the continuing saga of Gibbs and Lala’s relationship, NCIS: Origins season 3 will follow up on Caleb Foote’s Randy being kidnapped. While the perpetrators remain a mystery, the older Gibbs said in the season 2 finale that this crime was tied to the NCIS case files that Randy was digitizing. The season 2 finale also saw Origins’ main characters and their coworkers successfully preventing the Camp Pendleton office by formulating rebranding of NIS to NCIS.

Harmon has executive produced and narrated Origins since it began, and he reprised Gibbs on camera in the pilot and Season 2’s “Funny How Time Slips Away.” He’s now set to actively appear as the older Gibbs in all 10 episodes of season 3. This present-day storyline will see “ghosts from Gibbs’ past” disputing his retirement, requiring him to leave Alaska, where he decided to stay in his final NCIS appearance. He’ll subsequently return to the Washington D.C. NCIS office, as well as reunite with Bobby Moynihan’s Woody Browne, a forensic scientist from his Origins days.

Outside NCIS: Origins’ main cast and lineup of recurring characters, Adam Campbell will reprise the young Ducky Mallard in season 3 following his two appearances in season 2. Sean Harmon, who previously played the young Gibbs in several NCIS episodes, will appear in season 3’s second episode, titled “My Own Worst Enemy,” as FBI Agent Casey Bloom. It’s unclear if the younger Harmon’s new character will appear in the show’s ‘90s setting or in the present day.

NCIS: Origins season 3 premieres Tuesday, October 6 at 10 p.m. ET on CBS. The first two seasons, along with all the other shows in the NCIS franchise, can be streamed on Paramount+.

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  Austin Stowell

  Leroy Jethro Gibbs

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  Kyle Schmid

  Special Agent Mike Franks