After months of sidestepping questions about her character’s fate in NCIS: Origins, Mariel Molino teases fans with a Season 2 sneak peek. Here’s hoping Lala survived Season 1’s cliffhanger ending.
Production for NCIS: Origins Season 2 is in full swing, per Mariel Molino’s Instagram update (via Cinemablend). The actor shared a photo of the Paramount lot where she filmed Season 1, but the post doesn’t have context. Audiences last saw her character, Lala Dominguez, in a car crash, seriously injured and motionless. While it was hinted early on that the show is about “Lala’s story,” fans feared her arc ended with Season 1’s tragic twist.
Molino has yet to confirm her part in Season 2, whether Lala survived the accident, and how Gibb’s backstory unfolds in the aftermath. The latter could be a heartbreaking turn for Gibbs, who would take responsibility for the loss; he’s still mourning his wife and daughter’s deaths. It’s also possible Lala could return as an apparition, since there’s a precedent of that in NCIS Season 2 (Caitlin Todd reappeared in other characters’ visions after her death).
‘I Hope She Comes Back, But Who Knows’
Molino’s previous comments only fueled worries. “Oh, man…. I hope she comes back. I hope that she’s alive. But who knows,” she told TV Line last May. “NCIS has taken big swings before with characters and their futures, so it’s tough to say. Turn on those candles and pray, please!” In a separate interview, Showrunners David J. North and Gina Lucita Monreal were equally ambiguous: “I won’t officially say that Lala is dead, but certainly we went into this saying that we needed to give ourselves the wiggle room to take these big swings and do what we felt was right,” North said.
North explained how Season 1 led up to the finale’s ‘what if’ moment, after building up Gibbs and Lala’s will-they-won’t-they dynamic. “I want to see a Gibbs love story, which we’d kind of not seen in this way,” he asserted. “That was so interesting to me, and I had seen a movie recently at that time, Past Lives, that I thought was so well done in that you don’t really know which guy to root for in the couple, and we started breaking it in that way.”
Lala was on her way to Gibb’s house before the accident, and the cliffhanger left audiences wondering what could have been. Monreal said that’s why they chose to cut Gibbs and Lala’s romantic arc that way. “These are the types of things that happen that completely changed the course of your life, and it’s something that I think about a lot,” she explained. “It could have completely changed the trajectory of both of their lives. That’s the reason why we went with an accident instead of something happening to her in the line of duty, because ultimately it’s more relatable, it’s universal.”
NCIS: Origins Season 2 premieres Oct. 14 on CBS.
