• NCIS Season 23 ends with a gunshot cliffhanger involving Torres and McGee’s son Mateo — showrunner confirms someone was hit, but no one is dead
• Director Leon Vance (Rocky Carroll) returned in emotional flashbacks alongside his daughter Kayla in the finale’s central storyline
• NCIS: Sydney’s two-part Season 3 finale saw Meyers kidnap Ryan to force a prisoner trade with Mackey
• NCIS: Sydney has already been renewed for Season 4, while NCIS Season 24 is set to premiere in fall 2026
• Both finales aired back-to-back on CBS on May 12, making for a packed two-hour NCIS night

Tuesday night was a lot. CBS gave fans a full two hours of NCIS universe drama — first the Season 23 finale of the flagship series, then a two-part season-ender for NCIS: Sydney — and both shows left their audiences with something to sit with all summer long. One ended with a gunshot and a black screen. The other ended with a kidnapping and a mother’s desperate promise. Neither was easy.

NCIS Season 23 Finale: “Sons and Daughters”

The Season 23 finale of NCIS was built around grief, legacy, and a father-daughter bond we never got enough of while it was still possible. One year after a deadly coffee shop bombing, a new explosion pulls the team back into the case — and into the orbit of Kayla Vance (Naomi Grace), Director Vance’s daughter, who never believed the original attack was the work of a lone wolf.

She was right. When the team finds Ryan Wallace dead and his car stocked with backpacks rigged with bombs matching the coffee shop attack’s signature, Kasie confirms what Kayla had been saying all along: these bombs were too sophisticated for one teenager acting alone. There was a network. There always had been.

What made the episode genuinely moving was the way it wove in flashbacks to give fans one last real look at Leon Vance (Rocky Carroll), killed off earlier this season. We saw him on the phone with Kayla the moment the first explosion went off. We saw them sparring together a month later, Kayla telling him she was going to prove it wasn’t a lone wolf. And at the end, when Kayla found an envelope in her boxing locker — a discharge paper Vance had signed, giving her permission to leave NCIS and pursue her private extremism-monitoring operation full-time — we saw him one last time, standing in the ring, watching her with quiet pride.

It’s the kind of scene that earns its tears.

The villain of the hour turned out to be a sci-fi author who had been radicalizing teenagers and turning them into bombers to profit from the corporate targets they hit. Strange, dark, and unfortunately believable. Meanwhile, Deputy Director LaRoche (Seamus Dever) swooped in to investigate Kayla for taking dirty money to fund her unsanctioned team — accusations that also threatened to taint Vance’s legacy posthumously. Parker (Gary Cole) got him to back down, and the team eventually figured out that Vance himself had been the last person to touch that money because he’d discovered it and was trying to warn his daughter before he died. He wasn’t dirty. Neither was she.

LaRoche, ever the opportunist, made clear that publicly clearing Vance’s name would be his ticket back to NCIS — and that pointed look he gave the empty director’s chair was not subtle.

But none of that was the thing everyone’s going to be talking about.

That Cliffhanger: Torres, Mateo, and One Very Loud Gunshot

McGee’s newly discovered son Mateo (Patrick Keleher) came in for a tour of the NCIS offices, told Torres he was overwhelmed and probably wouldn’t apply for the internship — and then Palmer mentioned, almost as an aside, that Mateo had actually asked to use a tech workstation to submit an application. When Torres went looking for it, there was no application. No record of anything.

Torres — undercover veteran, professional skeptic, someone who has spent a career looking sideways at people — followed his instincts. He cornered Mateo in an alley. And Mateo, instead of explaining himself, pulled a gun.

“They could be watching,” Mateo told him.

Torres put his hand on his own weapon. The camera pulled back to a wide shot above the building. A gunshot rang out. Then black.

Showrunner Steven D. Binder confirmed to TV Insider that someone was in fact hit — but ruled out a death. “I sort of had my fill this season, all of us, of killing people,” he said. “When someone’s dead, they’re dead. It’s much more interesting — I’ll think back to when Gibbs shot McGee. It’s much more fun when someone’s alive and been shot than when they’re dead. And by fun, I mean, interesting.”

As for McGee’s reaction when he finds out what’s happened — whatever that turns out to be — Binder teased that his star agent is going to be pulled in two very different directions. He drew a direct parallel to a moment from the Gibbs era, when McGee’s sister showed up with blood on her hands and McGee had to choose between the law and his family. “I think when push comes to shove, that’s where McGee’s loyalties are going to lead him,” Binder said, “but it’s not going to be an easy experience.”

Season 24 of NCIS premieres in fall 2026. That’s a long time to wonder who’s bleeding in that alley.

NCIS: Sydney Season 3 Finale: “Hunter” and “Killer”

Over in Sydney, the two-part Season 3 finale kicked off when an FBI agent named Special Agent Byrne was found stabbed to death in Fiji — and the knife used to kill him matched one from Afghanistan footage of The Collective committing war crimes. That detail sent Mackey (Olivia Swann) and JD (Todd Lasance) straight to the FBI’s Sydney headquarters, where they crossed paths with Special Agent Park, who claimed to want justice for her old Quantico classmate but was quietly playing both sides.

The target at the center of everything: Lee Meyers, former CIA, currently in custody and about to be shipped back to the US for a secret national security proceeding where he’d effectively disappear into the system. Mackey’s play was to reframe the charges as war crimes — which would take jurisdiction out of American hands entirely and put Meyers in front of a real court at the Hague. It was a bold move, and Meyers knew it.

In the second hour, “Killer,” the team pieced together what Meyers had actually been doing: using the supposed War on Drugs as cover to clear out every competitor who might interfere with a massive upcoming sale. The criminal informants flooding in weren’t whistleblowers — they were pieces being swept off the board. Mackey got the full picture after pressing Meyers again in custody. He dangled a deal: let the buyer angle go, close the case, everyone gets something they want. Mackey wasn’t interested.

So Meyers escalated. Brutally.

The car carrying Mackey’s son Trey was forced off the road and into a river. The driver was shot in the head. Trey survived only because his father Ryan told him to hide when he heard footsteps — and Ryan was right to be scared, because those men grabbed him and disappeared before police arrived. Trey was still hidden in the wreckage when he heard his mother’s voice. He came out. He told her what happened. He asked her to bring his dad home.

Meyers made his terms clear: a prisoner trade. Him for Ryan. It was the only way out before he was transferred to an off-the-grid facility where he’d be erased from official existence. He knew exactly what Ryan meant to Mackey. She wouldn’t leave another soldier behind. And she wasn’t about to start now.

The good news for NCIS: Sydney fans: CBS has already renewed the show for a fourth season. The first-ever international edition of the NCIS franchise — built around a multinational taskforce of US agents and Australian Federal Police navigating naval crimes across the Indo-Pacific — isn’t going anywhere. Whatever state Mackey leaves things in at the end of this season, she’ll get a chance to deal with the aftermath.

Whether Ryan comes home is the question she’s carrying into that next chapter.

The post NCIS & NCIS: Sydney Season Finales Recap appeared first on Cream.

• Mark Harmon reveals retired NCIS Special Agent Leon Carroll Jr. shaped how he played Leroy Jethro Gibbs for 18 seasons
• The two co-authored their third book together, Ghost of Sicily, exploring a real NCIS investigation into the Mafia
• Carroll spent 21 seasons as the show’s technical advisor and now works on NCIS: Origins
• Harmon stepped away from NCIS in 2021 but made a return appearance in NCIS: Origins
• The pair hint there could be more books beyond their current trilogy

Mark Harmon played Leroy Jethro Gibbs for nearly two decades — but the man who truly built that character wasn’t a writer or a director. He was a real NCIS special agent who showed up on set every day and sat down in the chair next to Harmon while the cameras were being set up.

That man is retired NCIS Special Agent Leon Carroll Jr., and Harmon is the first to tell you: he owes him a lot.

“From the very, very beginning, I met Leon, and I spent a lot of time with him on set,” Harmon told Fox News Digital. “Some of that time, sometimes a lot of that time, was sitting in two chairs watching the setup of a shot and talking about this agency. For me, it was a deep dig from the very first day.”

Carroll spent 21 seasons as the technical advisor on the hit CBS drama, bringing genuine field experience to every scene. He now continues that work on NCIS: Origins, the prequel series following a young Gibbs — played by Austin Stowell — through the early years that shaped the man Harmon would eventually bring to life. The connection between the actor and the agent, though, goes far beyond the set.

From the Set to the Bookshelf

In 2023, Harmon and Carroll co-authored Ghosts of Honolulu, a nonfiction account of a Japanese spy and the Navy counterintelligence agent racing to stop him before Pearl Harbor. They followed it with Ghost of Panama in 2025. Now comes their third collaboration, Ghost of Sicily — a deep dive into a real NCIS investigation into the Mafia’s iron grip on the island.

The new book takes readers back to 1942 New York, tracing how the Office of Naval Intelligence made a controversial deal with an unlikely partner: organized crime. Specifically, the five families — three of which actively fed the ONI intelligence used to defend against German U-boats and, eventually, to support the Allied push into Italy.

“I have to say, in my experience, it takes a thief to catch a thief,” Carroll explained. “I wasn’t really surprised that our people back in the ’40s were doing exactly what I hope they’re still doing today. And that is recruiting sources who are not necessarily the best people in terms of their character.”

The book centers on Charles “Lucky” Luciano’s role in that alliance, alongside the daring field work of agents like Tony Marsloe — real history that Carroll says reflects the messy, high-stakes reality of intelligence work he knows firsthand.

What the Real Agent Taught the Actor

Harmon has always been open about the weight he felt playing an NCIS agent. He saw it as a responsibility — not just to the character, but to the real people the show represented.

“I’m humbled by my appreciation of Leon as an individual and what he’s done in his life and what he’s accomplished,” Harmon said. “And also, this TV show, in a different way, presented to this agency opportunities that were never apparent before.”

He didn’t take that lightly. Carroll is a former Marine — “there are no former Marines,” Harmon was quick to clarify, “they’re always Marines” — and a decorated agent whose career demanded a kind of respect that Harmon says shaped every scene he filmed as Gibbs.

“I just come at this with respect,” Harmon said. “This is a really hard job. Tough job. Lots of jobs are hard and tough. I get it. [But it’s also] a dangerous job. And what they’ve done for many years with really no accolades — these individuals who do this work don’t do it for the notoriety. They pride themselves on that.”

It’s a tension he acknowledged openly: a TV show about a secretive agency simultaneously helps and hurts the real people doing that work. But Harmon says he tried to honor it. “I do have to take responsibility for that because I’m an actor who played a role, and I dug deep when we first started. I tried to continue to do that to grow the character.”

The Lighter Side of a Long Friendship

Twenty-plus-hour shooting days in the early seasons of NCIS could have made the whole thing grim. Instead, Harmon made sure it wasn’t.

“He is a practical joker,” Carroll said of his co-author with a laugh. “There are a lot of different stories I can tell you about things that Mark was behind. Sometimes other people got blamed for it, but I know for a fact that the cookies that showed up in my cargo pants pockets when I would get home were placed there by Mark Harmon. He’ll say I took them from the craft services table. [Also,] the nails and bolts that ended up in my pockets.”

Harmon didn’t exactly deny it. “[There are] practical reactions and answers for me on all of these things that make total sense,” he said, beaming.

“If you don’t keep your humor on a set, on a sound stage — and in those days, in the beginning of this show, we were working 20-plus-hour days — and if people aren’t enjoying it at some point, you’d better find another way to do it,” Harmon said. “That has to be part of the interpretation of what you’re putting out there every week. And Leon was certainly a part of that.”

Life After Gibbs — and What Comes Next

Harmon stepped away from NCIS after 18 seasons in 2021, though he returned to reprise Gibbs in a handful of episodes of NCIS: Origins — including a Season 2 appearance where fans finally saw the older Gibbs hunkered down in his Alaskan home, a stray dog wandering in from the woods and staying for company. (When asked on the official NCIS: Partners & Probies podcast whether the dog had a name, Harmon was charmingly noncommittal: “I just know he’s got a friend sometimes.”)

The prequel series has been busy filling in the mythology fans have always wondered about — including, in its Season 2 finale, the moment Mike Franks first slapped a young Gibbs upside the head, the origin of that iconic gesture, and how the Naval Investigative Service rebranded itself into the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. The history runs deep, and so does Harmon’s connection to it.

As for what’s next for him and Carroll — the answer is deliberately open-ended.

“Am I surprised that [our friendship has] extended now to writing and to now publishing a third book? Absolutely,” Harmon said. “Do I think there’s something beyond this? Who knows? But right now, this is still part of a story to tell.”

The post Mark Harmon on the Real NCIS Agent Who Made Gibbs appeared first on Cream.