This is the story I don’t tell.
NCIS: Origins is a Prequel to the NCISverse.
Set in The '90s, the series follows a young Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Austin Stowell), who is still reeling from the deaths of his wife and daughter. In an attempt to move forward with his life, he accepts Special Agent Mike Franks' offer to join the Naval Investigation Service, and start a new career as a civilian criminal investigator. Now working out of the NIS office in Camp Pendleton, Gibbs works with a ragtag team of agents for an agency that is underfunded and overworked but dedicated to doing the utmost to investigate criminal activity involving the US Navy and Marine Corps.
It premiered on October 14, 2024, coinciding with NCIS' season 22 premiere episode.
On February 2026, NCIS: Origins got renewed for Season 3.
''NCIS: Origins" provides examples of:
- 555: The number that is paged to the agents when they need to make a secure call starts with 619-555, which is in the San Diego metro area, home to Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton.
- The '90s: The show starts in 1991. The characters work for the Naval Investigative Service, or NIS,note which was reorganized to become NCIS in 1993. (As depicted in the Season 2 finale) Agents rely on pagers and payphones to keep in touch, most office work is paper based, and the one computer in the squad room is initially kept turned off because no one knows how to operate it, until Randolph gets the hang of it by season 2.
- Adaptation Expansion: Downplayed. While the original series' NCIS does frequently feature and reference the size of the agency, it tends to primarily focus on the MCRT and its tight circle of associates. Origins goes out of its way to showcase the sheer size of NIS despite its humble beginnings, featuring many agents and employees interacting and working with each other on a daily basis.
- Been There, Shaped History: In "Hollywood Ending" it turns out that the idea of changing the name of the agency from "NIS" to "NCIS" was pitched by Wheeler to the newly appointed Director Morrow as a desperate attempt to keep the Pendleton office open. The idea itself actually came from Vera, Mary Jo, Kowalski, Herman, Dr. Friedman and Woody who Wheeler tasked with coming up with some way to convince Morrow to not split up the team.
- Bait-and-Switch: "Vivo o Muerto" seems to be building up to the moment that Gibbs killed Pedro Hernandez. This is only reinforced by the climax, which involves Gibbs in a sniping position at one of Hernandez's hideouts and Franks ordering him not to fire. Not only is Hernandez not present, but the ending reveals that Gibbs killed Hernandez six months ago, and the cartel covered it up to avoid appearing weak.
- The Bus Came Back: In addition to his narration duties, Mark Harmon's Gibbs makes a couple of brief appearances in the first two episodes of the series.
- Call-Forward:
- In "Bend, Don't Break", we see the origin of Gibbs' elevator conferences. It turns out he first does it as a stall tactic to hold a suspect until he confesses or the team gets evidence against him.
- "Incognito" starts the trend with characters not knowing what NIS/NCIS means everytime a NIS/NCIS agent identifies themselves.
- "One Flew Over" has Mike "accidentally" show Gibbs the NIS file on the deaths of Shannon and Kelly while he goes to the bathroom, which he uses later on to assassinate the gunman who killed them.
- "Vivo o Muerto" mentions the existence (and the rise) of the Reynosa Cartel. Gibbs would be involved in his solo work against it.
- In "Hollywood Ending" we see Franks give Gibbs a Dope Slap to the back of the head, just as he would do to his agents (mostly Tony) on the main show.
- The Cameo:
- In "Incognito", Wheeler's FBI contact calls over a young Tobias Fornell to hand over some intel for the case of the week.
- in "Cecilia" Lara Macy shows up, being from the Military Police, to investigate Gibbs.
- Also in "Cecilia", bouncer Todd' s cousin and real estate agent turns to be Diane, Gibbs and Fornell's future ex-wife.
- Confess in Confidence: "Sick as our Secrets" centers around the murder of a priest in a confessional, only for it to turn out that the killer was after the other priest at the church, because he had confessed to an armed robbery that ended in murder and wanted to kill the priest he had confessed to about this in case he talked. The team tries to get the surviving priest to reveal the name of the killer, but the priest doesn't want to break the seal of the confessional. Of course, in real life the seal only applies to the genuinely penitent, and the attempted premediated murder of the priest one confessed to (and second degree murder of a different priest by mistake) to cover up the crime would be a clear sign that he isn't penitent.
- Darker and Edgier: Origins lacks much of the offbeat humor that characterizes the original series, emphasizing a grittier and more dramatic approach. This is partially justified as the series starts around six months after Shannon and Kelly was killed, with Gibbs still reeling from the fallout. Things get at least ssomewhat lighter as time goes on and Gibbs settles into the team, but the show does continue to maintain a grittier tone than the mothership.
- A Day in the Limelight: "The Beautiful Ballad of Gary Callahan" is all about the Team Pet, both his backstory with Franks and his getting stabbed in the line of duty.
- Differing Priorities Breakup: Tish, Franks' girlfriend of 10 years, was raped some point before the series, leading to Franks trying to find the rapist, which puts a strain in their relationship, which after she tried getting him to forget about it, eventually, in "Monsoon", ends the relationship by packing his stuff in a box, but retains minor feelings.
- Disaster Dominoes: Presumably starting in "Cecilia", a little girl innocently plays with her dog, only to throw the ball so far, she ran after it, ending up the road that caused Lala to swerve in an attempt to avoid her, only to roll off another car and end up on the roof, but her status is unknown.
- Drowning My Sorrows:
- A quick exchange in the first episode indicates that Gibbs has been trying to deal with the grief of losing his wife and daughter by going out and getting drunk and picking fights around town.
- Eye Catch: Subverted. This is the first NCIS series to not have its own version of this.
- Faking and Entering: In Kowalski's limelight episode "Touchstones", Roger Murphy staged the evidence room to hide the money from a drug bust, pondering whether he should use that money to pay off his cumulative gambling debts.
- Fat Best Friend: After getting back and not wanting to enter his family home, Gibbs rents an apartment from Ruth Orozco, an overweight woman, who eventually kicked Gibbs out after multiple complaints. However, she changes her mind and they begin bonding over puzzles and the song Blue Bayou, tells him to get a job, but calls him crap in an apron, eventually inspiring him to apply at FLETC. But, it later goes downhill, when Ruth tells Gibbs she has blood cancer, making him fail his psychological evaluation and get in a fight with some Marines at Daly's. She bails him out and reprimands Franks for distancing himself from Gibbs. Eventually, when Franks hires him, Gibbs helps Ruth track down her estranged son in New Orleans, where she spent the rest of her life. After her death, Ruth's son called Gibbs about the sad news.
- Foregone Conclusion:
- Franks, Jackson Gibbs and Ducky will survive any perils they encounter in this series as they all die at different points in the mothership series. Dwayne Pride is safe too as he is still alive in-universe and will go on to head up the New Orleans office.
- Franks will leave NCIS in 1996 in the wake of the Khobar Towers bombing
. - Vera too is safe by virtue of having made a guest appearance on the mothership and still being alive in the present.
- As soon as Diane appears, everyone watching the show knows that she's destined to be ex Mrs. Gibbs #1.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Starting in Season 2, most episodes, with a couple of exceptions, are named after classic songs. Usually an episode will have the song it's named after play at some point.
- Inside Job: "Touchstones" mentioned that NIS agent Roger Murphy broke into the safe in the evidence room due to growing gambling debts. He hid it in the hopes of pondering over whether he should use the stolen evidence to pay off his bookie. A hit man approached him with regards to the missing girl from "All's Not Lost" and offered to pay him 25,000 in cash if Roger mentioned where she was.
- Institutional Allegiance Concealment: Gibbs and Lala go undercover in "Incognito" to catch a suspected black market buyer who's after intel on the Tomahawk missile.
- It's Personal: Randy decides to protect a Navy chaplain in "Sick As our Secrets" since he blamed himself when he found out a fellow NIS agent and a witness he was guarding was killed by an armed suspect.
- Jurisdiction Friction: NIS and the FBI do butt heads when a military suspect gets the attention of the latter. The "Enter Sandman" episodes explicitly refers to this issue after Mike and the team detain a POI named Bugs who's supposedly the suspect known as the Sandman, but he reportedly killed civilians despite having some military links.
- Leitmotif: The NCIS theme is used as a musical theme for Gibbs in the pilot, just as it was in the original NCIS. Later episodes move away from this as the show establishes its own identity. notably it does get one more usage in "Hollywood Ending" when Gibbs dons an NCIS jacket for the first time after NIS is renamed.
- Matricide: The ending of "One Flew Over" mentions that a Navy commander's wife "accidentally" killed her mother-in-law after she screamed at her for trying to steal her money. This was due to the latter going into dementia and the wife just went ballistic over the shouting matches she had to endure.
- Meaningful Name: The episode "Sick as our Secrets". Randy was getting sick of not telling his wife he went back to smoking despite telling her that he's given it up.
- The Mourning After: This prequel takes place (starts) six months after Gibbs’s wife, Shannon, and daughter, Kelly, were killed and Gibbs is clearly still deep in grief.
- Mythology Gag: "Bend, Don't Break" has Gibbs mention that it was in 1991 that he had rules written down.
- The Narrator: Mark Harmon narrates the series as the present-day Gibbs reading from the journal he's keeping in Alaska as he recollects his early years as a federal agent.
- New Meat: Gibbs starts out the series as the newest probationary agent on Mike Franks' team and has yet to shed his military habits, such as standing to attention when his seniors walk in.
- Never Suicide: In "Flight of Icarus", NIS was tasked to determine if a Marine died because he killed himself or someone was in his apartment, killed him and made it look like he did it. NIS concluded that the Marine did kill himself, likely from past trauma after his mother died when he was teenager.
- On the Rebound: In "Monsoon", Franks, who recently left the Marines, down on his luck and essentially delivering mysterious packages, walked out on Mary O'Neill, the mother of his son, Liam, while preparing to make a delivery, only for his bike to be stolen, flags down Tish to attend to her flat tyre and they eventually began a relationship after she gave him a haircut and shave to leave a moustache. It lasts for 10 years, until Tish broke up with him over his obsession of her raping case.
- Operation: [Blank]: Operation Sundown is an op ran by the CIA in Kuwait when they recruited contractors from a private security company known as Flintport Security. However, they were pulled back from their protection detail of a Kuwaiti CIA asset from being assassinated by pro-Iraqi gunmen when the oil wells were burning in Kuwait.
- Police Brutality: Franks does this to a death row inmate in "Last Rites", who lied to his sister-in-law where he buried her sister, his wife. The guards had to yank him off.
- Prequel: Origins takes place in the early 1990s, showcasing Gibbs' transition from a Marine to newly-minted NIS agent.
- Real Men Wear Pink: Mike Franks is an uber-macho Cigar Chomper who swaggers around in denim and cowboy boots and lets no one stand in his way. He also prepares for interrogations by listening to soft rock and power ballads, with "Enter Sandman" showing him engrossed by "Eternal Flame" by The Bangles.
- Relationship Chart: The NIS team uses a corkboard, photos and thumb tacks to arrange them in groups in order to identify anyone who's a suspect and who is a POI.
- Ship Tease: Gibbs and Lala get plenty of tension between them that borderlines on Belligerent Sexual Tension, which does not go unnoticed by Franks. Gibbs heavily implies at the end of "Enter Sandman, Part 1" that he and Lala do get involved at some point during his time in NIS.
- Status Quo Is God: Invoked. During the inter-season period while Lala is recovering from her accident, Randy is stuck behind a desk, and Wheeler is in the field, The Squad's effectiveness nosedives. Randy and Wheeler use the relevant statistics to convince The Powers That Be to restore the season 1 lineup.
- Title Drop: Mark Harmon as present-day Gibbs does this at the end of the two-episode pilot, titled "Enter Sandman".
- Titled After the Song: Barring the "Part 2" subtitle, the two part premiere is named "Enter Sandman". Some Season one episoes continue this, notably Cecilia and Blue Bayou. By Season 2, this moves into Idiosyncratic Episode Naming as most of the season's episodes excluding "The Beautiful Ballad of Gary Callaghan", "Rule 13" and "Hollywood Ending" take their titles from songs.
- Wham Episode: At the end of "Vivo o Muerto", in flashback Gibbs assassinates Pedro Hernandez of the Reynosa Cartel in Baja California despite news that the Mexican government declared him dead. This happens before he left the USMC.
- Wham Line: The ending of "Vivo o Muerto" gives one for the show's entire premise, which seemed to be building up to Gibbs' assassination of Pedro Hernandez. After the team spends the entire episode trying to track him down, Lala interrogates one of his enforcers, only to learn something that seems to catch her off guard. She goes to relay the information to Franks and Gibbs, shooting the latter one hell of a Death Glare:Lala: Pedro Hernandez died six months ago. The cartel covered it up so they wouldn't look weak. He was shot by a sniper.
- Working the Same Case: After a break in the "Sandman" case courtesy of "Bugs" Boyd reaching out from prison, Vera ventures out to follow up that case. Meanwhile, the rest of the team investigates a robbery, where the victim is a Marine reservist. The victim is missing his wallet, which includes money, a picture of his late father during World War II, and the proxy card for his job at the watershed. While monitoring electrical activity of the victim's belongings, their system pinged the card at the watershed, which is less than half a mile from the prison. Cue a Mass "Oh, Crap!" reaction from the team as the robber snipes Boyd dead during recess.