NCIS season 22 was an interesting season for McGee, but it seems the show isn’t done surprising fans with the direction it’s going to take the characters in next.
NCIS season 22 took McGee on quite a journey, especially in the final stretch of the season.
While others tried to tell him he was imagining things, McGee knew something was up with Deputy Director LaRoche from the start, and his gut proved to be correct. In the closing episodes of the season, we learned that LaRoche had been working undercover this whole time. He burned Torres’ cover early on in order to win over the trust of the Nexus cartel and serve as a mole with the goal of bringing the cartel down.
After the truth came to light and his cover within the cartel was blown, LaRoche decided to tender his resignation as NCIS Deputy Director, and his time on the show officially came to an end. With LaRoche stepping down, many fans began to speculate about whether this could pave the way for McGee to pursue the NCIS Deputy Director job once again. After all, it was a job that McGee went out for and clearly wanted, so wouldn’t it make sense he’d pursue the job with LaRoche out of the picture?
Well, that would be a resounding no, it seems.
While it seems like the natural storyline progression would be for McGee to once again pursue the NCIS Deputy Director job in season 23, it does not appear that there is any plan for McGee to want the job next season. In fact, it seems the whole storyline revolving around McGee’s pursuit of the job was created as a way to bring LaRoche into the fold.
“His desire for it was sort of a creation of [the] LaRoche [storyline]. We didn’t go, ‘Let’s move McGee up, and how can we complicate it?’ It was, ‘Hey, let’s bring in this guy LaRoche, and McGee wants his job.’ Shoving McGee up into an advisory, mid-management level position… just saying that, already I’m falling asleep! Besides, Sean [Murray] is great in the bullpen,” NCIS showrunner Steven D. Binder told TVLine following the finale.
Honestly, this does make sense when you think about it. We never really heard McGee express a desire to become NCIS Deputy Director until the LaRoche storyline came about, and we can definitely see Binder’s point in that it was a brilliant way to bring in the character of LaRoche and create this conflict between him and McGee.
Looking back on the season, McGee wasn’t ever going after LaRoche out of jealousy but rather from a place of wanting to protect NCIS and fearing LaRoche wasn’t who he said he was. McGee wasn’t trying to bring him down to get the job; he felt something was off and his instincts proved to be correct which helped him save the day in the end.
Binder is also 100% accurate in his stance that McGee is great in the bullpen, and the last thing we’d want to see would be his character evolving into a mid-management level bureaucrat working a desk job. He’s too valuable to the core team, and he’s best in the field, working cases alongside his team. That’s not to say we wouldn’t love to see McGee taking on a leadership role down the line, perhaps someday leading the team in the field, but for now, we’re happy right where he is!