Warning: SPOILERS for the NCIS episode “Heaven and Nature” are ahead!
The majority of the NCIS Season 23 midseason finale focused on finally revealing what happened to Alden Parker’s mother. However, “Heaven and Nature” ended on an unrelated, but arguably more shocking note. Four years after exiting the popular CBS series, Emily Wickersham returned as Ellie Bishop, watching the funeral for Parker’s mother from afar right as Jessica Knight learned that Bishop was the target for her first NCIS Elite mission.
NCIS Season 23 will resume airing on the 2026 TV schedule in a few months. In the meantime, showrunner Steven D. Binder has shared some information about what we can expect from Bishop later in the season, including how this will affect her almost-love interest, Wilmer Valderrama’s Nick Torres.
What’s Next For Bishop On NCIS
When we last saw Ellie Bishop in the NCIS Season 18 finale, she’d quit the law enforcement agency and torched her reputation in order to go on an undercover information put together by her handler that required her to be a “disgraced NCIS agent.” While speaking with TVLine, Steven D. Binder had this to say about the mission that’s entangles Bishop with Knight:
I can tell you that she left on a pretty dangerous, interesting mission in a foreign land, and she has been doing that kind of work since then, and it's taxing and it's trying, and it's deadly, and people die, and you're responsible for people dying. You're not at the Four Seasons, and she is not the same person. I mean, in some way, she is. She still likes her Klowny Kakes. [Laughs] But she is not the same person that left the show. She's a very different person. A lot has happened to her, and that will go a long way to explain why we are looking for her in a way that suggests she's done something wrong.
Needless to say Binder didn’t elaborate on what Ellie Bishop has done wrong, but fans will learn about her motive. However, if you were hoping that Bishop’s return would kick off the next long-running NCIS storyline, pump the brakes. It turns out this particular plot will wrap up pretty quickly, with the showrunner saying:
We're gonna run this story out and have it end, so expect to see her right now in one episode that will run it out. We have no official plans right now to continue that storyline, but we had a great time with Emily, and Emily had a great time here. So she's sort of back on the roster, so to speak. But we've done some very long arc stories that have run out. This is not going to be one of them. We're going to go right to what people want to see, and we're going to have some closure, although that may or may not be what people want to see. We'll find out.
Steven D. Binder then clarified that Emily Wickersham could still return to NCIS following the conclusion of this story, calling Bishop “a way more interesting character now, because of the wear and tear on the psyche.” So at least fans can take comfort knowing she’ll make it out of this mess alive. This reminds me of when Cote de Pablo made her own surprise return as Ziva David in the NCIS Season 16 finale, then came back for a few Season 17 episodes.
How Bishop’s Return Will Affect Torres
As ndicated earlier, Ellie Bishop and Nick Torres had a ‘will they, won’t they’ thing going during their five seasons together, which culminated in them kissing before Bishop left. So on the subject of how Torres might react to learning that she’s resurfaced, Steven D. Binder said this:
Well, I would refer you to that last scene between them, where not only was she leaving, she was going to leave without saying anything. She was going to leave and let him believe her cover story, which is that she's committed a crime. Now duty says that she has to do that.
That might fly if Bishop and Torres had maintained a primarily professional relationship. But even though things never really progressed romantically between them, this is NCIS we’re talking about. The leading characters, past and present, are like a family, which in turn means they often don’t follow orders if it gets in the way of helping each other. Binder continued:
But I'm pretty sure people who are married to someone they trust, who work at high levels of the government, tell their spouses shit they're not supposed to tell them. I know that they're probably breaking the law by doing so, but my God, it's your wife or your husband. So if I'm Nick, I might be a little annoyed that I was not told. And I think that's how he feels: She left. She lied. She wasn't going to say goodbye. How would anyone respond when this person suddenly shows up? And I think Nick's not going to surprise us.
As such, Steven D. Binder also revealed that “circumstances will dictate” that Jessica Knight eventually loop Torres in on what’s happening with Bishop despite Vance having told her to keep that to herself, as “chooses team loyalty over her oath, over her duty.” Now I wonder how this shakeup will affect the possibility of Torres and Knight ending up together, which was seemingly teased in “Stolen Moments.” NCIS Season 23 will get back going on Tuesday, February 24, but it’s unclear if that’s when we’ll see Ellie Bishop again or if that will happen later.
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