NCIS: Origins is chiefly about Leroy Jethro Gibbs’ early days as an NIS agent and his older self telling the story about his history with “her,” i.e. Cecelia “Lala” Dominguez. However, there are obviously other characters to get invested in on the prequel series as it continues its run on the 2025 TV schedule, including team leader Mike Franks, fellow team member Bernard “Randy” Randolph, and Special Agent Vera Strickland. Origins showrunners David J. North and Gina Lucita Monreal spoke with CinemaBlend about what’s coming up for Franks and Vera in the coming weeks on Season 2, and I also appreciated them clearing up something I was wondering about regarding Randy.
There’s A “Reckoning” Coming Between Mike Franks And His Brother
While Lala’s car crash was the biggest moment from the NCIS: Origins Season 1 finale, it was also a big deal when Kyle Schmid’s Mike Franks got a phone call from his brother, Mason, whom he hadn’t spoken to in years. However, we’ve learned in these opening Season 2 episodes that the two still aren’t getting along. So when my discussion about this week’s Ducky-centric episode (which included a cameo from the same hat David McCallum wore on NCIS) with them was over, I asked North and Monreal what they could share about Mason coming in for Origins’ next episode. North started off by saying:
There's gonna be a reckoning at some point. Franks is a character whose family means everything and loyalty is what he operates on. So obviously whatever's happened between these two to get in between them is enormous, and we'll see it all come to a head.
We met Mason Franks in the flashbacks in “Flight of Icarus,” when he agreed to enlist in the Vietnam War after Mike was drafted. The good news is Mason didn’t die in Vietnam. The bad news is by the time of the flashbacks in “Monsoon,” things had escalated to the point where Mike wouldn’t even acknowledge that he had a brother. We’ll finally learn what caused them to become estranged in “Next Tuesday’s “No Man Left Behind,” with Monreal saying:
Right, we know they went off to Vietnam together and when they came back, they weren't speaking. There's a big rift between them, and so we will dig into what happened and why.
Mason will be played by Law & Order: SVU’s Philip Winchester in the “present day” of 1992. According to the synopsis for “No Man Left Behind,” he “blows into town, desperate for help after hitting rock bottom.” This happens as the team is investigating a Navy bank robbery.
Vera Will Continue To Play An Important Role In Season 2
While Vera Strickland is one of NCIS: Origins’ principal characters, because she’s no longer working directly alongside Mike Franks, she only pops up if one of the team’s cases overlaps with something she’s working on, or if she’s involved with someone’s personal storyline. While that’s not changing in Season 2, Gina Lucita Monreal assured me that Vera, played by Diany Rodriguez, will still have plenty of interactions with Franks’ team:
Vera will continue to cross paths with our main team. She has her own separate team, own separate office, but we love when she comes and brings her expertise and her own sense of humor, so she will continue to cross with our characters throughout the season.
In fact, it won’t be too much longer until Vera Strickland gets another chance to shine. David J. North informed me that she’ll appear in the decades-spanning NCIS and NCIS: Origins crossover airing on November 11. In his words:
And she'll be a big presence in the big 2 hour crossover that we're doing with the original NCIS on Episode 5.
Now that is interesting, and leads me to wonder, what if Vera is in both parts of the crossover? Remember, the character was first played by Roma Maffia in the NCIS Season 11 episode “Under the Radar.” Since Mark Harmon is only reprising the older Gibbs in the Origins half of the crossover, maybe Maffia’s Vera could be the main connective link across the two time periods.
Randy’s Not Concerned About Being In The Field Anymore
Finally, there’s Caleb Foote’s Randy, who expressed concern in the NCIS: Origins Season 1 finale about continuing to serve in the field, as he has a wife and child. Unfortunately, merely bringing this subject up resulted in him being put on desk duty, though he was finally able to get back onto the team at the end of the Season 2 premiere. Nevertheless, I was curious about if we’d continue to see Randy pursue getting a promotion so he wouldn’t need to be a field agent anymore, and here’s what Gina Lucita Monreal told me:
I think Randy realized pretty quickly that when he was on the desk that he is not a desk agent. He's a field agent, that's where his talents lie. Through the opening of the premiere, we touched on that. He was a field agent and he realized that pretty quickly. I think there will always be concerns and fears with Randy because he has a family, but I think in his heart of hearts, he knows who he is, this is who he is. His wife knows that, his wife accepts that about him. So it's not a storyline that we're going to be pursuing in terms of him wanting to get back on the desk, but we will still see how the job affects him in a personal way.
So Randy’s staying on Mike Franks’ team on the foreseeable future, though depending on how long NCIS: Origins runs for, we could still see him move higher up in NIS. Gibbs goes on to lead his own team in Washington D.C., so why couldn’t Randy do the same? But that would be years away, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
NCIS: Origins airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on CBS, and episodes can be streamed the day after with a Paramount+ subscription. However, the show will shift over to 8 p.m. ET on November 11 in order for the aforementioned crossover with NCIS to unfold chronologically.
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