Warning: SPOILERS for the NCIS: Origins episode “Cecilia” are forward!
The NCIS: Origins Season 1 finale aired on the 2025 TV schedule earlier this week, and it left one hell of a serious twist for viewers to mull over till Season 2 premieres later this yr. Within the ultimate minutes of “Cecilia,” Lala Dominguez crashed her automobile, and it was unclear if she character was alive or lifeless. However that wasn’t the one large second on this NCIS: Origins episode, as Lala and Austin Stowell’s Leroy Jethro Gibbs additionally practically kissed. It was the almost-culmination of the ‘will they, gained’t they’ dynamic these characters have shared this season, and after listening to showrunners David J. North and Gina Lucita Monreal clarify why they dealt with this facet of the prequel the best way they did, I agree with their artistic determination.
Given how shut Lala and Gibbs got here to smooching and eventually appearing on their emotions for each other, I requested the showrunners if there was ever an incarnation of the Season 1 finale, or the season total, the place the characters did kiss, or if it was all the time the plan to maintain them aside romantically. Monreal began off by telling me:
Properly we all the time knew that they’d have obstacles, simply due to the place Gibbs is emotionally with simply having misplaced his household, the place Lala is throughout the job, how she views Gibbs and the way that adjustments all through the season. So we all the time knew that we wished it to be a love story, however that there could be nice obstacles in between them.
Contemplating that Lala will not be one in all Gibbs’ future ex-wives and wasn’t even talked about throughout Mark Harmon’s tenure because the character on the unique NCIS, it stood to motive that issues most likely wouldn’t work out effectively romantically between these two. Older Gibbs even narrated in NCIS: Origins’ two-part premiere that the prequel’s story is about Lala, but it surely’s not one he likes to inform. Like Gina Lucita Monreal stated, Origins definitely didn’t make it simple for Gibbs and Lala to get shut, from the previous nonetheless dealing with the homicide of his spouse and daughter, to the latter initially having a boyfriend and likewise later studying that Gibbs killed Pedro Hernandez.
However then in “Cecilia,” it lastly regarded like Gibbs and Lala have been going to behave on their emotions for each other, with the 2 virtually locking lips whereas they have been in a pool. Nevertheless, Gibbs ruined the second when he knowledgeable Lala that he was turning over the sniper rifle he used on Hernandez to Claire Berger’s Lara Macy, who was investigating the drug seller’s loss of life. Lala was upset by this information, and Monreal knowledgeable me that it wouldn’t have been proper for the kiss to nonetheless occur afterwards, saying:
There was numerous discuss within the room about whether or not or not they need to truly kiss in that second. We went forwards and backwards, and in the end determined that as a result of Gibbs has this large life-changing information to inform her, if he did kiss her in that second, from Gibbs’ POV, it could be kind of disingenuous, and I do not suppose it could have been true to his character. So we had him pull again as a lot as he wished to in that second.
It was left ambiguous on the finish of “Cecilia” if Lala remains to be alive or lifeless, so we’ll have to attend till NCIS: Origins’ Season 2 premieres to have that questioned answered. That stated, even when Lala did survive that crash, it doesn’t seem like there’s nonetheless the potential of a romance blooming between her and Gibbs. That’s as a result of as Lala’s automobile crash was occurring, Gibbs was assembly Diane, the true property agent who’s promoting the home the place he as soon as lived together with his spouse and daughter. That’s proper, we’ve met the lady who will grow to be Gibbs’ second spouse, so it stands to motive Season 2 will delve into their romance.
We’ll simply have to attend and see if there will likely be any extra moments between Leroy Jethro Gibbs and Lala Dominguez till NCIS: Origins Season 2 arrives this fall alongside NCIS Season 23. That’s additionally across the time that the brand new spinoff NCIS: Tony & Ziva will premiere solely on Paramount+, and it stays to be seen when NCIS: Sydney Season 3 will arrive.