Welcome back to NCIS, Emily Wickersham! The Tuesday, December 16, fall finale ends with the shocking reveal that Knight’s (Katrina Law) new NCIS: Elite target is none other than Bishop — who has eyes on the team at the cemetery. She was last seen in the Season 18 finale.
Elsewhere in the last new episode of 2025 before the series returns on Tuesday, February 24, 2026, Parker (Gary Cole) got answers about his mother’s death and learned exactly who Lily is: the daughter of a cop who abused his family. Parker’s mother was killed by said cop while protecting Lily. Parker gets his closure when he meets the adult Lily, and he also is able to give his mom a proper burial (after it’s discovered that it was Lily’s mom’s body, not his mom’s, in her grave).
Below, executive producer Steven D. Binder reveals why NCIS has brought back Emily Wickersham, what having Bishop back means for Torres (Wilmer Valderrama), and much more. Plus, get scoop on the original plan for Parker’s backstory here.
Why bring back Bishop now and in this way?
Steven D. Binder: When someone leaves, you’re always wondering, do they want to come back? Do we want them back? We wanted her back, and once we started hearing that she might be interested, we were like, OK, well, we can start really seriously thinking about the things that we’ve been doing. And one of the things that’s going on with the show is we’re exploring some relationships between our characters and some interesting mixing and matching. And we thought bringing Bishop in for Torres at this particular moment would upend an apple cart that’s coming down the pike after this episode airs and put a very interesting spin on it. Plus, he never got the closure that he felt he needed. And it was an abrupt departure. I think the details of it, why Bishop did what she did, become a little more clear in this episode, but he’s a fully-fledged human and this is a moment that he’s been wanting to have and we were happy to finally have an opportunity to give it to him.
CBS
How many episodes is Emily back for?
Well, the one you saw and then, so far just the one — for now.
When Bishop left, Gibbs (Mark Harmon) had told her she was living Rule 91 — when you decide to walk away, don’t look back. Can you say how much she’s lived by that rule since she left? Is she looking back now, or is she at the cemetery because NCIS Elite is targeting her? Because it’s unclear who exactly she’s watching in that last frame.
Right. I can say, and you’ll figure it out on the flip side, she is in the middle of it. She’s in the thick of things. She’s in a very active, very high-pressure, very tense situation. So she’s not on a beach in Tulum pontificating whether or not it’s time to return, she is forced to return by circumstance to the only people that, — well, the only people that she trusts or the only people that she’s going to screw over. We’ll see what happens.
Yeah, because the people she trusts, one of them is the one who, now Bishop’s her target.
That’s right.
So is this mission, whatever it is that’s going on with Bishop, still connected to when she left? Because when she did, she had to be a disgraced NCIS agent, and she said she’d be gone too long, so is that still the same thing, or can you say if there’s multiple things going on?
She has moved on. She’s in the same world. She’s fighting the good fight behind the scenes, and it is in a different arena. It’s a different theater, but one that more reflects some current things happening in the world. But she has found a niche, and she’s excelling in it. We brought her in, she was a cerebral character, she was a smart character, she was a computer-savvy character, and then we turned her into a kick-ass agent … sort of Jason Bourne in a way. It’s very dynamic.
You did bring up the Torres of it because that relationship was so complicated, it ended before it could even begin because of the way that she left. Where are their hearts when it comes to each other, and how aware are Torres and Bishop of it at this point? Because it’s two different things to know how you feel and to be aware of how you feel.
Yeah, I sort of buried the lede here because I’ve been thinking a little bit about an episode you haven’t seen yet, but I can tell you this: She’s been gone for a while. She’s been in a very serious life-or-death situation. She’s seen some very scary stuff and some very hairy stuff. She’s not the same person that [she was when] she left. She is a very different person. The world has beaten her up, and maybe a little too much, let’s put it that way. So, friends are enemies, enemies are friends in the world she’s in, and that’s how she views the world now, I think. And when she comes back, to people who were previously her friends, we may have to wonder where her head’s really at.
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That kind of leads into what I was going to bring up about Bishop and McGee (Sean Murray). They kind of left things on the wrong foot. They didn’t resolve things before she left.
They did, and I will refer back to, she’s not being targeted by NCIS Elite and by Director Vance [Rocky Carroll] and assigned to Agent Knight because she’s been a good person, let’s put it that way. So, all of her relationships are going to be colored, all of her feelings are going to be colored by who she is now and not who she was. Who she was if she was gone for five years, she’d come back and maybe there would be one conversation, but now she’s Bishop 2.0 and also it wouldn’t be interesting to bring her back and she hasn’t moved anywhere. It just wouldn’t be a good drama. And people move on with their life. People change, especially in the world that she’s in now. It’s a very high-stakes, high-pressure situation. People break, people’s loyalty shift, people’s priorities shift. And so when she comes back, her relationships with her old friends are very much — at least what it appears is that she’s not the person who we remember.
And you’ve also been touching on the possibility of Knight and Torres — is it just professional jealousy, what exactly is going on there? We had the moment with Palmer (Brian Dietzen) at the end of last week’s episode when he is watching them leave together. But you have to also take into account, now Knight is the only one who knows about Bishop. So how much is she struggling with not telling Torres about this?
Her loyalties will be clear very quickly, who she’s loyal to. Duty would suggest she needs to keep her mouth shut, but that’s not the way we’re going to go. It’s a family and a team, and this is her partner, and I can tell you she’s going to bring him in pretty early — but I want to correct that slightly. The issue will be solved for her to some degree. She won’t necessarily have to make a choice. Bishop will force this upon her. … Knight and Torres are going to find themselves teaming up in some new and exciting ways that challenge their bond, but also deepen it. And having Bishop show up right in the middle of that is also an interesting nuance.
So then there’s almost like a love square possibility going?
Right, right. There’s a lot of — quadrangle at this point or a pentagon. We’re doing some things.
Of course, now that you have Emily back, the question has to be, are there any other returning characters coming up, whether it’s in a regular episode or Episode 500 — which, also, congratulations on reaching that episode.
Thank you. There’s going to be a bunch of characters from the past coming back in the 500th, not as big as Bishop for sure, but there will be a lot of characters from the show’s history making an appearance, giving some nice nods to some fan favorite episodes. A lot of Easter eggs actually in the 500. I would say look closely in every corner, any image, any interesting image, it all is either foreshadowing or is just a fan Easter egg to honor the show’s legacy.
And we do have another character, a larger character — somewhere between a guest star from an episode and Bishop — who will be making an appearance towards the second half of the season. So we’re looking forward to that. Also, a two-parter, so that will be fun. And I’m trying to think what else we have coming down the pike. We’ve had some really solid episodes. I think the best episodes are yet to come. I really do. We’ve got when Bishop actually shows up, and we’ve got some major news for McGee, life-changing news for McGee, I think the 500’s going to change everything in some ways. And then we’ve got this really fun two-parter, so we got a lot of really fun stuff coming up.
