[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for NCIS: Origins Season 1 Episode 10 “Blue Bayou.”]
Well, now we know what led to Gibbs (Austin Stowell) joining NCIS after he killed the man who murdered his family, Pedro Hernandez. And he has his landlord, Ruth (London Garcia), to thank for so much.
As flashbacks reveal on NCIS: Origins, Gibbs and Ruth became close—to the point that she was his phone call when he was picked up for a bar fight. And when Franks (Kyle Schmid) shows up after hearing what happened, Ruth is the one to explain that Gibbs failed his psych eval because she’d told him before it that she’s dying (cancer) and get through to him about taking him on his team. In Gibbs’ present, he learns that Ruth died—and after he tells Lala (Mariel Molino) about her, the other agent decides not to put in for a transfer off the team as she’d planned after learning that he killed Pedro. But before the episode ends, the camera zooms in on two pieces of shredded paper: “They labeled Operation Sundown ‘a catastrophic mishandling of’” and “That Boyd, AKA Bugs, had worked closely with a second sniper.”
Below, co-showrunner David J. North breaks down the fall finale and teases what’s ahead when the show returns in January.
There’s the question of how many more people Gibbs can lose right now. You show how his and Ruth’s friendship developed, then she dies. This comes as Lala was planning to leave the team. Why did you want to explore this new tragedy for Gibbs at this point?
David J. North: As someone that loves NCIS so much, and it’s been such a huge part of my life, I’ve always thought there’s this big missing chunk of what we know about Gibbs, a huge, important part, which is what really happened after he killed Pedro Hernandez. In NCIS canon, Franks shows him that folder, that file, he killed Pedro, and suddenly, he’s an agent. There’s a little more there, but it’s just kind of danced around. Gina [Lucita Monreal] and I really wanted to fully go into that, what happened during those months after he killed Pedro, and to us, that’s something that you don’t just bounce back from. So he came back and he was in a horrible place and he left the Marines. He couldn’t even face his father [Robert Taylor] to tell him that. People come into our lives at different times and sometimes it’s some of the people you least expect who become the most remarkable and influential to us.
Erik Voake / CBS
And Ruth, played by wonderful London Garcia, was just a bit role that we had seen in Episode 7 showing Gibbs’ apartment. Gina and I spoke and thought how wonderful for a character like this to have been such an influence on Gibbs, and we’re really proud of that episode. Austin’s performance is fantastic. The first NCIS in, I guess, 1000 and some episodes that never had a case, no crime was committed in the episode, but in an origin story, really getting into the origin of why Gibbs became an agent was fascinating to us and we’re really proud of it.
Lala does decide to stay. What makes her think she can get to a point where she can trust Gibbs?
I think at the end of the day, it’s complicated. As Lala says in the darkroom at the beginning of that episode, if someone killed my family, I don’t know what I’d do. Maybe the same thing you did, Gibbs. It was really the fact that he didn’t tell her. But I think deep down, she understands what a difficult position that he was in and we are going to leave it right where we [do] at the end of the episode, which is that she wants to try to trust him again. But I think they’re on thin ice, for sure, with their relationship and their feelings and all of that.
You focus in on two shredded pieces of paper at the end. First of all, what can you say about Operation Sundown, labeled a catastrophic mishandling of something?
I don’t want to say much about that without giving too much away, but we will learn about what exactly Operation Sundown was in the coming episodes.
Then there’s the matter of Boyd working with a second sniper. Did you know from the start of the season that you’d be using him like you are for Vera’s (Diany Rodriguez) program?
Yes, we did know that we would be using him for Vera’s program. At the end of “Sandman Part 2,” the second part of our pilot, Mark [Harmon]’s voiceover, older Gibbs’ voiceover tells us that Gibbs had felt like there could have been more to this story and now we’re learning that there is.
What can you say about that second sniper?
I can say that Bugs certainly was a part of this, but that there is a bigger bad out there that needs to be reckoned with.
Sonja Flemming/CBS
Does that lead to Vera working more with the team?
Absolutely. Vera is going to be an integral part of this and getting into the mind of Bugs and what made him tick is really going to be a crucial part in us finding out who else was involved.
With Vera working with the team more going forward due to Boyd, what will we see between her and Franks, given their history? I liked what we got in Episode 5.
Like in Episode 5, we’ll see more of Vera’s passion project, which is her pilot profiling program. Bugs Boyd is one of the criminals she’s profiling and as secrets begin to be unearthed, Franks will find himself pulled back into a case he wishes would’ve remained closed forever.
Besides Boyd and I’m assuming Operation Sundown, are there any more multi-episode cases coming up?
As always, our characters’ personal stories will track throughout, but we’ll be telling close-ended whodunnit cases… with a couple very memorable exceptions.
You’ve been slowly introducing aspects of the Gibbs we know on the show: stopping the elevator, the tease of the rules, woodworking, fishing, etc. What are some other things you can tease we’ll see the origins of?
Oh, I think we’ll just have to stay tuned. There’s going to be a lot. I think that we planted the seed certainly with even building the birdhouse with Gibbs, but we still haven’t gotten into exactly where the boat building came from and things of that nature.
What else can you tease that’s coming up when the show returns?
When we come back from our break, it’s going to be a runaway train to the end. Obviously, we’ve left on a big cliffhanger and revealing that Bugs wasn’t working alone. Gibbs and Lala still have a lot to be worked out, and you’ll be seeing in coming episodes that there’s going to be a huge change to Franks and his personal life.
Will we see Mark Harmon again onscreen in Season 1?
Right now we’re keeping the focus on 1991, but you never know, anything is possible.
What can you tease about what we’ll be seeing when it comes to Gibbs and his father’s relationship going forward, given what we’re seeing from Gibbs as he begins to heal?
Gibbs has a complicated relationship with Jackson. And things only got more complicated after Shannon and Kelly were killed. Jackson [headed] home to Stillwater, Pennsylvania, but in our winter finale “Blue Bayou” the two did briefly reconnect. And Jackson is a looming presence in his son’s life, so we haven’t seen the last of him.
NCIS: Origins, Returns, Monday, January 27, 2025, 10/9c, CBS