NCIS’ guest star lineup over its 23-season run has been pretty incredible, and the guest stars are continuing to bring the action for Season 24 on the 2026 TV schedule. I’m always amazed over who has appeared on the long-running procedural, especially if it’s before they became households names. Since NCIS has over 500 episodes, it’s easy to forget who has been on the series. For example, it completely slipped my mind that Breaking Bad’s Matt Jones was on the show, and apparently, he really dropped the ball.
Jones was keeping busy during the early 2010s. While recurring as Jesse Pinkman’s friend and occasional meth dealer Brandon “Badger” Mayhew on Breaking Bad, Jones landed the role of NCIS Special Agent Ned Dorneget on NCIS in 2011 during Season 9. He was only in six episodes though 2015, but the character became endearing due to his sheer enthusiasm. Unfortunately, Dorneget’s life was cut short in Season 12 when he was killed in an explosion.
The death was unexpected and definitely heartbreaking, and I'm really surprised to learn that there’s no one to blame for it except for Jones himself. As the El Camino alum revealed on The Joe Vulpis Podcast:
That was my bad. That was absolutely my bad. I was on Mom, and I had been recurring on NCIS. I ran into the showrunner at the time, Gary Glasberg, rest in peace, and he was like, ‘Ah! We’d love to have you back on NCIS.’ We were on Mom now. And I was like, ‘Yeah, the schedules are hard to… you know what? I can get some time off. Let’s do one episode, you should kill me.’ And he goes, ‘Yeah! That’s a great idea! Let’s kill you!’
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Considering Jones was on Mom at the time and he stayed on the sitcom until 2019, it’s understandable that he’d want to step away from the drama series and go out with a bang. After all, the actor was of the belief that he just wouldn’t have any time to do both shows. Still, did he really have to suggest killing off Dorneget instead of having him reassigned to a different office?
I was really starting to love Dorneget before he was killed, and it makes me sad thinking about what could have been. Even over 10 years later, the decision still haunts Jones, which is understandable:
It was my idea to get killed off on NCIS. I left Mom, and I could’ve come back. And I could’ve gotten a regular on NCIS: New Orleans or wherever the hell NCIS is now. Oh, man, it’s such a regret.
It does make me wonder what would have happened had Jones not gotten ahead of himself and suggested Dorneget’s death. On the one hand, it's possible that he could’ve stayed with the show in a recurring capacity as he continued his stint on Mom. However, it’s also possible that Dorneget could’ve become bigger fixture on NCIS. He was a great addition to the team and brought some hope to cases, and I think it's plausible that he could've become a series regular or gone on to star in a different spinoff. Unfortunately, we’ll never know.
Despite taking the easy way out, Jones has nothing but praise for NCIS, the cast and the crew. He compares it to other jobs he’s had, and points out just how fun the series was, which makes his departure even more heartbreaking:
I loved doing NCIS. That was a fun job. I don’t know why that job was so fun, because I’ve done other procedurals that are not so fun. But that show was really fun. It was written well, and that crew was a very family-type crew. And they’re all weirdos that are on this island in Santa Clarita, and I don’t know. At the time when I was doing it, [Michael] Weatherly and all those ding dongs were on the show, it was just fun.
It’s sad that Matt Jones asked to be written out of NCIS, but there really was no way of knowing how his schedule would work out. While Dorneget is dead and has been for over 10 years now, it would be fun to see him again in a dream or a flashback. Or perhaps, maybe this could be turned into another fake death scenario. CBS' long-running military drama is unpredictable, so you never know what could happen. For now, though, new episodes air on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET, streaming the next day with a Paramount+ subscription.
