[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for NCIS: Origins Season 1 Episode 9 “Vivo o Muerto.”]
Even before we’d seen one minute of NCIS: Origins, we had a major question we needed the show to answer: How would it address Gibbs (Austin Stowell) killing the man who murdered his wife and daughter? Well, the prequel shows just that in the second-to-last episode of 2024.
Ahead of the fall finale, the team works a case with a link to Pedro Hernandez. And while Lala (Mariel Molino) is worried about how Gibbs might react to possibly coming face-to-face with the man—and promises that she will find Hernandez—it turns out that she doesn’t need to be. Gibbs already killed Pedro months ago, and now Lala knows!
Below, co-showrunner David J. North breaks down the key episode and teases what’s ahead.
I have to say congratulations on the full season order!
David J. North: Thank you, Meredith. I really appreciate that. Yeah, we’re really excited about that, the pickup and doing 18 and we’re breaking the rest of the season as we speak.
We get the moment that everyone had been waiting for in this episode with Gibbs killing Pedro Hernandez. Talk about showing that at this point in your approach to that scene since we’d only had flashes of it and what led up to it on NCIS.
Well, of course we’ve been building to this for a long time and months ago when we got into the writers’ room, this was one of the top moments that we were building this season around. It’s such a huge part of Gibbs’ life and the lore of Gibbs. Gina [Lucita Monreal] and I, obviously having written on the OG NCIS for so long, have dealt with storylines around it, but really there was a lot of unanswered questions as far as what happened once Franks [Kyle Schmid] showed him that file. In NCIS canon, it’s just kind of Franks showed him that file and then we see that it was done. But here we really wanted to get into ground it in the reality of what would’ve happened, which is this was still a killer that NIS and no other people authorities could find. So how did Gibbs do it? And you kind of see that for Gibbs really did it by sheer will and in the process learned that he himself has ability to be a great cop.
So Lala now knows what Gibbs did, and this comes after she promised him that she would get Pedro for him. What does this mean for their relationship and continuing to work together?
Well, I think it’s interesting because Lala is herself a character who is far from a goody two shoes, but she’s also someone that needs to trust the people that she works with. And when she told Gibbs, I’m going to get him, I’m going to get Hernandez, and I’m going get him for you, Gibbs didn’t say anything. He didn’t tell her the truth, which is that he already got him. So that’s something that Lala is going to have to wrestle with and whether or not, Gibbs as a partner on her team is someone that she can trust moving forward.
The question of the story of her and Gibbs and Lala’s relationship continues to loom large. So what can you say about that relationship, especially after that voiceover at the beginning of this episode with Gibbs’ “You wonder if she thinks about you at all”?
Well, I think that the undercurrent of there being an attraction between these two characters of Lala and Gibbs is clear. I think sometimes we meet people at different times in our lives and the timing isn’t right, and that’s certainly the case with Lala and Gibbs, but there’s a magnetic pole between them. As far as the story of her, everyone’s just going to have to stay tuned. I will say that by the end of the season they’ll know much more.
Does it have anything to do with Rule 12? Never date a coworker?
Yes, it very well could have something to do with Rule 12.
So you just revealed that Randy (Caleb Foote) was supposed to be protecting Shannon and Kelly, and it is of course inevitable that Gibbs finds out. But talk about introducing that secret of Randy’s at this point.
Well, Randy is the type of character that until episode eight, we’ve really just seen the lighter side. He’s someone that brings a smile to work every day, but I think we’ve all got things that we’re carrying and on this show we really want to try to develop each character and keep them as real as possible. I mean in Gina and I’s minds, these characters are so rich and we really enjoyed exploring that. And we knew in canon that there was this character Mitchell who was killed and is what brought us into this of realizing Randy, what that would be like to know that you stepped down and another agent was killed. And we were really proud of Caleb’s performance in that episode and moving forward, seeing what that will do for Gibbs and Randy’s relationship because at this point Gibbs still doesn’t know.
What can you tease about what we’ll see there going forward? How much are you going to see it weighing on Randy that Gibbs doesn’t know?
Well, Gina and I kind of feel like this is something that Randy worked through largely in that episode because the reality is, had Randy been there, the same thing would’ve happened, just he would’ve been the agent that was killed. But at one point we will build to a point where he and Gibbs can have the conversation. But I don’t think it’s something that Gibbs would hold a grudge over
We see just how much Franks cares about his team and Tish (Tonantzin Carmelo) in this episode, but he’s pulled in two directions because he’s worried about both. How much is that going to continue, that pull for him between the two different parts of his life?
Yes, that’s absolutely going to continue. And for Franks, it is. He’s constantly at a fork in the road and he’s also at a fork in the road with what to do with his own folder that he has on the man that assaulted Tish, whether or not he can let that go like she’s asked him to.