NCIS: Origins Showrunners Told Me Why They Handled Gibbs And Lala Romance The Way They Did, And I Completely Agree With The Decision

Warning: SPOILERS for the NCIS: Origins episode “Cecilia” are ahead!

The NCIS: Origins Season 1 finale aired on the 2025 TV schedule earlier this week, and it left one hell of a major twist for viewers to mull over until Season 2 premieres later this year. In the final minutes of “Cecilia,” Lala Dominguez crashed her car, and it was unclear if she character was alive or dead. But that wasn’t the only big moment in this NCIS: Origins episode, as Lala and Austin Stowell’s Leroy Jethro Gibbs also nearly kissed. It was the almost-culmination of the ‘will they, won’t they’ dynamic these characters have shared this season, and after hearing showrunners David J. North and Gina Lucita Monreal explain why they handled this aspect of the prequel the way they did, I agree with their creative decision.

Given how close Lala and Gibbs came to smooching and finally acting on their feelings for one another, I asked the showrunners if there was ever an incarnation of the Season 1 finale, or the season overall, where the characters did kiss, or if it was always the plan to keep them apart romantically. Monreal started off by telling me:

Considering that Lala is not one of Gibbs’ future ex-wives and wasn’t even mentioned during Mark Harmon’s tenure as the character on the original NCIS, it stood to reason that things probably wouldn’t work out well romantically between these two. Older Gibbs even narrated in NCIS: Origins’ two-part premiere that the prequel’s story is about Lala, but it’s not one he likes to tell. Like Gina Lucita Monreal said, Origins certainly didn’t make it easy for Gibbs and Lala to get close, from the former still coping with the murder of his wife and daughter, to the latter initially having a boyfriend and also later learning that Gibbs killed Pedro Hernandez.

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But then in “Cecilia,” it finally looked like Gibbs and Lala were going to act on their feelings for one another, with the two almost locking lips while they were in a pool. However, Gibbs ruined the moment when he informed Lala that he was turning over the sniper rifle he used on Hernandez to Claire Berger’s Lara Macy, who was investigating the drug dealer’s death. Lala was upset by this news, and Monreal informed me that it wouldn’t have been right for the kiss to still happen afterwards, saying:

It was left ambiguous at the end of “Cecilia” if Lala is still alive or dead, so we’ll have to wait until NCIS: Origins’ Season 2 premieres to have that questioned answered. That said, even if Lala did survive that crash, it doesn’t look like there’s still the possibility of a romance blooming between her and Gibbs. That’s because as Lala’s car crash was happening, Gibbs was meeting Diane, the real estate agent who’s selling the house where he once lived with his wife and daughter. That’s right, we’ve met the woman who will become Gibbs’ second wife, so it stands to reason Season 2 will delve into their romance.

We’ll just have to wait and see if there will be any more moments between Leroy Jethro Gibbs and Lala Dominguez until NCIS: Origins Season 2 arrives this fall alongside NCIS Season 23. That’s also around the time that the new spinoff NCIS: Tony & Ziva will premiere exclusively on Paramount+, and it remains to be seen when NCIS: Sydney Season 3 will arrive.