NCIS Season 23 Is Copying A Trick From Its Current Best Spinoff, But I’m Afraid It Won’t Work
Wilmer Valderrama’s Nick Torres and Katrina Law’s Jessica Knight sitting at an interrogation table in NCISCustom image by Milica Djordjevic
NCIS is planning to copy an element from one of its best spinoffs for the upcoming NCIS season 23, but I am worried the change will actually damage the show. The NCIS franchise has continued to grow over the years with NCIS developing several location-based spinoffs. However, their best spinoff so far has been the show’s prequel, NCIS: Origins, which premiered last year and follows Gibbs’ team when he first joined NIS in the early 1990s. NCIS is even planning on copying one of the best parts of NCIS: Origins, but it might not be for the best.
NCIS season 22 brought back several popular NCIS tropes like recurring villains and deeply involved personal arcs for the show’s MCRT. The season finale even introduced one of the show’s best storylines in recent years, with Parker’s father being killed by the season’s villain, Carla Marino. NCIS seems to be on a trend for great stories for its upcoming season, but it will take a lot of inspiration from NCIS: Origins and I am not sure about the combination.
NCIS Season 23 Will Have More Character-Centric Stories (Like Origins)
NCIS Season 23 Will Be Noticeably Different From Its Predecessors
NCIS has often focused on the characters’ lives throughout the show’s many seasons. However, more often than not, cases and villains take priority over the MCRT’s personal lives. This tendency is seen all the way back to NCIS season 2 when Rudolf Martin’s Ari Haswari killed Sasha Alexander’s Kate Todd in the finale. After more than 20 years of doing this, NCIS season 23 will be different. Instead of highlighting criminal and military cases related to Naval and Marine Corps personnel, NCIS season 23 will focus on personal stories.
This update for the highly anticipated NCIS season 23 was revealed by NCIS’ showrunner, Steven D. Binder, in an interview with TVLine. Speaking with Matt Webb Mitovich, Binder said that he wants “to make this a character-forward show in a way we haven’t seen before.” The change comes at a time when NCIS season 22 has already introduced the seeds for bigger character-centered storylines in NCIS season 23, as several of the stories from the previous seasons have not reached a satisfying conclusion yet. Read Binder’s full quote below:
We really want to get to everybody in a big way. I know people always say, ‘I watch the show for the characters’ — that was always our thing — and I really want to make this a character-forward show in a way we haven’t seen before. So, if you’re invested in these people, this is going to be the season for you.
Binder’s decision to have a larger character focus in NCIS’ future seasons did not develop in a vacuum. Instead, the decision came from a growing trend in the NCIS franchise to focus on personal arcs. No other NCIS spinoff has shown this like NCIS: Origins. Rather than be a show that focuses on Gibbs’ life and the types of cases that developed his skillset as a Special Agent, NCIS: Origins highlights every character of Gibbs’ team with their own episode.
Austin Stowell as Gibbs in NCIS_ Origins and Sean Murray as Tim McGee in NCIS
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NCIS: Origins is unique in that way, as while every NCIS spinoff has shown character growth in some way, NCIS: Origins has gone deeper by highlighting the personal problems of every character in the team. To what extent personal arcs will be highlighted in NCIS season 23 remains to be seen, but if they are anything like the ones shown in NCIS: Origins, then NCIS season 23 will have to make cases secondary. Either way, NCIS season 23 will be different from its previous seasons, and it largely has to do with the success of NCIS: Origins’ stories.
Why Origins’ Character-Centric Approach May Not Work For NCIS
NCIS’ Characters Are Already Developed
Having more character-centric plots could be good for NCIS, but it could have several consequences too. For one thing, the characters in NCIS have already been there for years. While there has never been a huge focus on one character, most of the character details have been fleshed out as time went on. As a result, it does not seem like there is much more to talk about regarding the characters, especially if the writers want to follow NCIS: Origins’ path, which features a deeply personal character
