I’m a grown-ass adult, and the NCIS: Origins Season 1 finale wrecked me when I screened it for the first time two weeks ago.
I thought about it, a lot, that entire weekend.
I found it to be heartbreaking as hell, but also brilliant in the way it answered the almost-unanswerable question of, “Why had Gibbs never mentioned this Lala person before, over 400-plus episodes of NCIS?”
We’d heard about Shannon, and Diane, and Rebecca, and Stephanie… but nope, never any Cecilia Dominguez. What could “the story of her” be, that it never crossed Jethro’s lips?
NCIS: Origins‘ Season 1 finale answered that question, devastatingly but perfectly — if Lala did not survive that car accident.
And I’m frankly shocked it’s even a question of whether she did.
When I got on the phone last week with cast member Mariel Molino, for what I assumed was what we call an “exit interview,” there was no question in my mind that Lala died on the scene after flipping her Jeep whilst en route to tell Gibbs that she saved his Pedro Hernandez-killing bacon. It seemed plain as day, in large part because that is what made the finale so damn powerful. The oft-undervalued Lala went to the mat for her team, and then died, tragically, before she could reveal her handiwork — and before she might express to Gibbs how she feels about him, in the wake of that near-kiss in the swimming pool.
It wasn’t until two days later, when I hopped on a Zoom with NCIS: Origins co-showrunners David J. North and Gina Lucita Monreal, that the former noted, almost as an aside, “I won’t officially say that Lala is dead.”
Wait, what?
Now, those who do this thing I do hear that kind of hedging a lot from showrunners. (In fact, mere hours after my chat with the Origins bosses, the Fire Country EPs were out there being coy about the fate of a character who had a burning building collapse on him, played by an actor who is leaving that show.) I “get it,” to an extent. But Lala’s fate, in my mind, was non-negotiable. Her death, while tragic, is what took a good finale and made it great, because it was so resonant.
And because it resolves that unanswerable question.
How could Mark Harmon’s Gibbs begin to tell someone any small thing about Lala, without sharing the whole thing? And without breaking his heart all over again? Lala was a woman who, professionally, put it all on the line for her probie, and who, personally, led a widower to open his heart back up after the unimaginable loss of his wife Shannon and their daughter Kelly.
It’s hard for us, as viewers, to just talk about that finale! (Both Mariel and I got choked up during our conversation.) Can you imagine living it, forever remembering the pain of it, as the character of Gibbs did?
That is why Lala must be dead. To have her survive that crash would greatly undercut the impact of the finale’s closing minutes.
I cannot imagine any scenario in which Lala survives that A) doesn’t considerably weaken the case for why Gibbs never told this story before, and B) doesn’t hang an albatross around Season 2’s neck. What, is Lala in a coma for a while, and Gibbs visits…? And then she dies? Or does she fully recover and… what, there’s some other reason, down the road, why she becomes She Who Must Not Be Named across 19 seasons of NCIS?
There’s simply no alternative outcome that works, that doesn’t feel like a cheat.
I know that it will/would be hard to lose Lala from the show; what a wonderful character she was, steady as a rock but full of fire when she needed to be. Since Day 1, she gave me Marion Ravenwood vibes. Both she and TVLine Performer of the Week honorable mention Molino carried a lot of weight on their shoulders ever since Narrator Gibbs told us, at the close of Episode 1, “This is a story I don’t tell. This is the story of her.”
But her story has been perfectly told. Let’s not diminish it by adding an extraneous chapter.
