Though longtime NCIS followers understand how Mike Franks’ story ends (and in the event you don’t, I like to recommend utilizing your Paramount+ subscription to rectify that), NCIS: Origins is offering a platform to discover components of his previous that had been touched on within the flagship present and, extra importantly, are brand-new. Kyle Schmid performs the youthful model of the mustachioed man within the prequel that premiered on the 2024 TV schedule in October, and among the many Franks-related highlights we’ve gotten to this point embrace seeing him delve again into one among his hardest instances and studying how he and Leroy Jethro Gibbs met. Now with the Origins midseason finale behind us, CinemaBlend realized from co-showrunner and govt producer David J. North what’s arising subsequent for Franks, and it has me each excited and anxious.
Forward of the airing of “Blue Bayou”, which, along with teasing the following large Season 1 villain, confirmed the sequence of occasions that led to Mike Franks recruiting Gibbs onto his NIS crew, I had the privilege of talking with North about his work on NCIS: Origins. Throughout our dialog, I requested him if there could be flashbacks targeted on different characters later this season now that the Gibbs-focused flashbacks had caught as much as when Origins started, and he answered:
We’re shifting on to different characters. Within the second half of the season, we’re about to be taught a complete lot extra about how Mike Franks turned Mike Franks. And I will simply say we’re actually enthusiastic about it as a result of the viewers is not going to consider the place we take this. As a lot as we expect we find out about Franks, we keep true to that, however we’re actually coloring in how Franks turned Franks.
Mike Franks has been a part of NCIS lore since Muse Watson first performed the older model of the character in NCIS Season 3’s last two episodes. We realized a good quantity about Franks throughout Watson’s 20 appearances on the flagship present (a large quantity being the character in ghost type), however barely any particulars had been shared about his life from earlier than he met Gibbs. Effectively, I used to be positively excited to be taught from David J. North that one, if not a number of NCIS: Origins episodes will delve into how Franks turned the colourful character we all know and love. On the naked minimal, I’d prefer to find out how he joined NIS following his time in america Marine Corps.
NCIS: Origins has additionally shed on gentle on Mike Franks’ private life via his romantic companion in 1991: Tish Kwa’la, performed by Tonantzin Carmelo. Sadly, it was revealed in “One Flew Over” that Tish was sexually assaulted in a car parking zone previous to the beginning of the sequence, although in that episode, she demanded Franks cease making an attempt to search for her rapist. Between that traumatic occasion and Tish by no means being talked about on NCIS, I shared my concern with North that the couple’s story will finish in tragedy. Right here’s what he needed to say about that:
This season arising, we’ll delve a lot additional into their relationship, and Franks goes to take care of some issues personally that basically have an effect on him completely. When she requested him to surrender on the lookout for the person that assaulted her, that is not a straightforward factor for Franks to do and possibly one thing he simply cannot do.
Mike Franks is set to trace down the person who attacked the love of his life, even going to far as to ask Vera Strickland, his former NIS companion, to discreetly create a psych profile of Tish. Though Franks did conform to drop this, as North knowledgeable me, one thing is arising that may both make it difficult for him to honor her want or see him outright breaking the promise. Maybe that may result in them breaking apart attributable to belief points, which might be unhappy, although it’d be preferable to Tish being killed off, which I fear continues to be a risk.
NCIS: Origins resumes airing on CBS Monday, January 27, however David J. North didn’t share any particulars on when these Mike Franks-centric plot factors will air on the 2025 TV schedule. The excellent news is that now that Season 1 has been expanded to 18 episodes, we’ll be spending much more time with him than initially anticipated.