Will Gibbs Return to NCIS? Mark Harmon Says He Doesn’t Know!

Mark Harmon will be heard narrating as the present-day Leroy Jethro Gibbs in CBS’s upcoming NCIS: Origins prequel series starring Austin Powell. However, when, if ever, will Harmon be seen again on the original NCIS series as the team’s former leader?

Harmon remains an executive producer on NCIS but has not appeared on-camera since early Season 19, when Gibbs informed McGee that he would not return to D.C., opting instead to stay in the sleepy Alaskan town where a case had led them. At the Television Critics Association summer press tour, Harmon explained his NCIS exit: “It wasn’t so much a decision to leave, but the right timing to push away a little bit. I was thrilled with the storyline they came up with and how they handled the character. And the show continued on.”

Updates on Gibbs’s whereabouts had been few until the second episode of the past season, which wrote out the late David McCallum’s Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard. In that emotional hour, an envelope addressed to McGee from the fictional Naktok Bay in Southwest Alaska contained a Polaroid of Gibbs, McGee, and Ducky, indicating that Gibbs is still in Alaska. Gibbs did not appear in the McCallum tribute episode, nor did he appear in the franchise’s milestone 1,000th episode, which aired in April (instead, Michael Weatherly cameoed as former team member Tony DiNozzo).

When asked about his potential return to NCIS, Harmon said at the TCA panel for NCIS: Origins, “I have been asked that a lot… I’ve always let the writers do what they want to do.” When asked if NCIS had directly invited him back over the past three years, Harmon replied, “Directly, like a phone call…? Not that I’m aware of.” TVLine inquired if he might return for NCIS’s eventual series finale. Harmon responded, “I don’t know. It’s really about feeling like you’re fulfilled with a role or complete with a role.” He humorously added, “I don’t think he’s still standing in the stream” in Alaska.

Previously, NCIS co-showrunner Steven D. Binder addressed Gibbs’s absence from the franchise’s 1,000th episode by telling TVLine, “Of course the door is always open,” but added, “when we bring him back, we’re not going to bring him back for two minutes” like Weatherly’s cameo. “It’s got to be something special.”