Can NCIS Survive Without Mark Harmon’s Gibbs? Future Explained

NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service lost a key character when Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs, played by Mark Harmon, left, but it still hopes to survive. NCIS is currently on season 19, with Gibbs making his grand exit in episode 4, “Great Wide Open.” With plenty of the season still to go, it remains to be seen whether NCIS has a viable future without Gibbs.

Fans of NCIS know that Special Agent Gibbs comes with a tragic backstory: his wife and daughter were killed as the result of a drug cartel case, and this continues to weigh heavily on Gibbs for years after. In season 19, episode 4, Gibbs ends up in Naktok, Alaska on the trail of a criminal CEO who hired a hitman to cover the truth of her mining project’s environmental damages. Though he breaks several laws in the episode, including ditching an FBI agent, Gibbs doesn’t end up fired and behind bars. In a moment of major character change for Gibbs, he chooses to stay in Alaska because it’s the first place he’s felt peace since the deaths of his wife and daughter. This leaves Gibbs’s story much more open-ended than if he had left the show by being killed or arrested.