Warning: SPOILERS for the NCIS: Origins episode “The Edge” are ahead!
Today’s been a big day for NCIS: Origins fans. First, it was announced that Mark Harmon will appear on camera on Origins during its half of the upcoming crossover with NCIS, the first time he’s done so since the prequel series began in October 2024. Hours later, “The Edge,” which just finished airing on the 2025 TV schedule, brought back Adam Campbell as the younger version of Donald “Ducky” Mallard, whom we’d previously seen in four NCIS episodes.
Origins Season 2’s third episode shed a lot of light on the character, including why he calls Leroy Jethro Gibbs by his middle name (he reminds him of the agriculturist Jethro Tull) and how he unintentionally inspired Gibbs’ boat-building hobby (by gifting him a ship in a bottle). But arguably the biggest reveal came with learning why Ducky talks to bodies, which we saw the late David McCallum did when he was playing him for so many years on NCIS. Origins co-showrunner Gina Lucita Monreal and Campbell opened up to CinemaBlend about telling this “difficult” story and more.
What Gina Lucita Monreal Said About This Ducky Reveal
Ducky Mallard stopped by Camp Pendleton to ascertain if the NIS office needed its own in-house medical examiner, though Mike Franks and Cliff Wheeler were initially suspicious his true intent was to find ways to shut the office down. However, with Doc Tango having his hands full with other autopsies, Ducky was soon recruited to take over examining this week’s victim, a woman who was found frozen inside a restaurant freezer. It turns out that she’d been exposed to a bioweapon created by a company she’d been doing IT for, but by deliberately shutting herself in the freezer, she was able to preserve a sample of it within her porcelain filling.
In the midst of Ducky provided some much-needed help to many of the main NCIS: Origins characters, he also realized on this case how important it was to “listen” to the victims on his autopsy table, just like he’d done when he was seeing living patients. And thus, Ducky’s penchant of talking to bodies was born, and here’s what Gina Lucita Monreal, who showruns Origins with David J. North, told me about this reveal:
I believe that talking to bodies was first, and it was also the most difficult. We wrestled with that one a lot. How are we going to tell the story of why Ducky talks to bodies? And it went through many, many iterations. And I think Adam Campbell in his performance just nailed that piece where he realizes that he’s failed, that he’s thought that the evidence [went] away, and then realizes that he can actually save this case, but it’s through addressing the bodies directly. So yeah, getting to that point was quite a challenge, but I’m glad we finally figured it out.
It took a while for justice to finally be served for this woman, as her body needed to be properly thawed over several days. As a bonus, Ducky realized that the “proper” way to do autopsies wasn’t necessarily the best way for him to get the job done. So with all due respect to Ducky’s mentor, Dr. Walter Magnus, Ducky’s going to be a lot more chatty in the morgue at the Washington D.C. NIS office going forward.
What Adam Campbell Said About This Ducky Reveal
“The Edge” was Adam Campbell’s first time playing Ducky Mallard in the NCIS Season 18 episode “Everything Starts Somewhere,” which chronicled his character and Leroy Jethro Gibbs (then played in flashbacks by Sean Harmon) meeting each other in 1980. Here’s what Campbell told me in a separate interview when I asked what he though when he learned that NCIS: Origins would pull the curtain back on this untold chapter of Ducky’s life:
Well, it’s really cool because I think on the face of it, I thought this episode would be about the impact Ducky has on others. But it’s kind of cool that this episode explores the change that Ducky actually goes through as well. And so a very significant moment happens for him while he’s in Pendleton, and that is this rediscovery, this reconnection with how he used to be as a medical doctor, interacting with living people, and he realizes that same connection he can have with victims who’ve died.
As Gina Lucita Monreal said, it wasn’t easy to cracking the story behind why Ducky talks to bodies, but eventually they figured it out. Then Adam Campbell came in to sell the explanation with his performance, and he did so admirably. Ducky was able to take that bedside manner that made him a great doctor and apply it in a different way to his work as a medical examiner. Campbell continued:
He starts to see them not as lumps of meat, but as actual humans with dignity, with living relatives in many cases. And I think that’s a profound thing for Ducky that he brings with him, and that obviously David brings out further and further in the later years on NCIS.
With 11 years to go in the NCIS timeline between “The Edge” and when we meet David McCallum’s Ducky Mallard in the JAG backdoor pilot, hopefully there will be more opportunities for Adam Campbell’s version of the character to make his way back to Camp Pendleton. Next up on NCIS: Origins, we’ll meet Mike Franks’ brother Mason, played by Philip Winchester, in “No Man Left Behind,” which airs next Tuesday at 9 p.m. ET on CBS.