The NIS team is back — with one notable absence.
Entertainment Weekly can exclusively debut the trailer for season 2 of NCIS: Origins, the prequel series that returns to CBS on Oct. 14. The teaser features footage from season 1, including Gibbs (Austin Stowell) and Lala’s (Mariel Molino) steamy near-kiss in a pool.
But in new footage, Lala is noticeably absent, her fate still hanging in the balance following the season 1 finale cliffhanger of her fiery car accident. Things, however, aren’t looking good.
“The team wasn’t what it used to be,” says original Gibbs, Mark Harmon, in voiceover. “I tried to keep my mind busy at the office. The job wasn’t right without her.”
We see Franks (Kyle Schmid) and Gibbs storming what appears to be a drug house and Gibbs stumbling on a gruesome murder scene, including a bloody heel sticking out the hole of a sock with a body propped at an odd angle.
“I need this team back to the way it was before I lose my damn mind,” yells Franks in another snippet.
Whether or not Lala survived her accident, Gibbs appears to be trying to move on. A brief clip shows a shirtless Gibbs being kissed on the cheek by Diane (Kathleen Kenny), the woman who we met at the end of season 1 as Gibbs’ realtor and who longtime NCIS fans will know as Gibbs’ second wife.
“She’s able to disarm him right away in this very vulnerable point in his life where he’s packing up the house,” Stowell previously told EW of Diane’s entry into his life. “It’s one of the worst processes that one can go through. So for her to be able to not piss him off and have him throw her out of the house is a win already. The fact that he starts to show her around, and she says something about his eyes, and he takes the compliment. There’s no scowl. He’s caught off guard.”
When we previously asked showrunners David J. North and Gina Lucita Monreal whether or not Lala is dead or alive, Monreal only said, “We will neither confirm nor deny.” That appears to be the statement they’re sticking with if the trailer is anything to go by.
Regardless of whether Lala pulls through, this incident is clearly impacting Gibbs. “What happens with Lala at the end is real,” North previously said. “We’ve all dealt with this sort of tragedy in our own lives in different ways. And as tough as it is to see, it’s genuine and certainly a part of what we’re learning is what made Gibbs.”
“This will have gigantic ramifications on him,” Stowell teased last spring. “No matter what happens, he just cannot seem to stop hurting people. I don’t know whether it’ll make him double down on his feelings for her or make him so scared that he wants to completely retract.”
“Is she dead? Is she in a coma? Is she paralyzed?” he asked. “I don’t know any of these things. I know this much. He’s going to find out that she was in a car accident after it seems like she was on the way to his house, so the guilt will only build.”
