Mark Harmon will be heard — narrating as the present-day Leroy Jethro Gibbs — on CBS‘ upcoming NCIS: Origins prequel series starring Austin Powell.
But when, if ever, will Harmon be seen again on the NCIS mothership, as the team’s former leader?
Harmon remains an executive producer on NCIS, but he has not appeared on-camera since early Season 19, when Gibbs informed McGee that he would not return to D.C. but instead stay put in the sleepy Alaskan town that a case had led them to.
Harmon, appearing at the Television Critics Association summer press tour on Saturday, said of 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,” he added. “And the show continued on.”
Updates on or from Gibbs, let alone his whereabouts, had been few — until the second episode of the season gone by, which wrote out the late David McCallum’s Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard. Early on in that emotional hour, we spied an envelope addressed to McGee from the fictional Naktok Bay in Southwest Alaska, inside of which was a Polaroid of Gibbs, McGee and Ducky. Meaning, Gibbs thus far is still calling the 49th state home.
Gibbs did not actually appear in the McCallum tribute episode, however. Nor did he appear in the franchise’s milestone 1,000th episode, which aired in April. (Instead, Michael Weatherly cameo’d as former team member Tony DiNozzo.)
So, when will Gibbs be seen again? What will it take?
“I have been asked that a lot…,” Harmon said at the TCA panel for NCIS: Origins. But, “I’ve always let the writers do what they want to do.”
Following the panel, Harmon was asked if NCIS had ever invited him back over the past three years. “Directly, like a phone call…? Not that I’m aware of,” he said.
TVLine then asked if, at the very least, he might return for NCIS‘ eventual series finale — whenever that rolls around.
“I don’t know,” he once again hedged. “It’s really about feeling like you’re fulfilled with a role, or complete with a role.”
One thing Harmon seems firm about, though: “I don’t think he’s still standing in the stream” in Alaska, he said with a chuckle.
Previously, NCIS co-showrunner Steven D. Binder addressed Gibbs’ absence from the franchise’s 1,000th episode by telling TVLine, “Of course the door is always open,” but “when we bring him back, we’re not going to bring him back for two minutes” à la Weatherly’s aforementioned cameo. “It’s got to be something special.”
