Spoilers ahead for the Season 2 premiere of NCIS: Origins, “The Funky Bunch.”
Ever since the first season finale of NCIS: Origins premiered, fans have been anxiously waiting to see what would happen to Mariel Molino’s Lala Dominguez after she got into a car accident. Filming kicked off in July, and there was a major Lala update when Molino shared a photo from the Paramount backlot, indicating that she is indeed appearing in Season 2. The premiere on the 2025 TV schedule further confirmed that, but things are only getting more complicated.
Tuesday’s premiere episode, “The Funky Bunch,” revealed what happened to Lala, and the team has been having to adjust without her as she recovers from the accident, and she was itching to get back to work. She does eventually return to work, and things seemingly going back to normal for her, aside from some tension between her and Gibbs. Molino tells TV Insider that the normalcy is what her character needs, but the accident is still going to weigh heavy on her mind. In her words:
Definitely. I mean, she’s trying to come back to normalcy. She’s trying to be there for her team and trying to make sense of what her life is now and why she survived. And I think that’s what we’re going to see her grappling with this season, is the why. Why did she survive? Why is she alive? Why didn’t she die?
Lala went through something traumatic, and she was out of commission for a while, and even though she’s finally back at work, it sounds like the accident won’t go away so easily. Her mental health is going to take a toll, and while she has her team to lean on, knowing Lala, she will also deal with everything by herself.
There will also be a physical toll on her, and fans have already seen her in the pool doing rehab, and now that she’s back at work, she will be working on herself a lot:
I think Lala is always going to keep preparing herself for whatever may come. I think we’re going to see a lot of the repercussions of this insane accident that are going to come up in ways not only physically, but mentally. She suffered a traumatic brain injury, and we’re going to start to see what that means in terms of not only physically but emotionally for her. So that’s something that it’s not dealt with, and it’ll keep coming up in different ways throughout the season.
Since NCIS: Origins Season 2 just premiered, it’s hard to predict just what kind of physical and mental toll the accident will have on Lala, but fans have already been seeing a little bit of it. She was able to smile and sing along with her team at the end of the episode in the car, but it was also clear that there is something deeper, and the show will continue to explore that as the season goes on, which should be interesting.
Meanwhile, Lala’s recovery is not all that fans will be able to look forward to in the second season of NCIS: Origins. The prequel will be crossing over with NCIS for a special event in November for a case that spans decades. It’s going to be exciting to see the two teams come together in different ways, and it all starts on November 11.
Fans will just have to tune in to new episodes of NCIS: Origins on Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on CBS to see how it all works out for Lala. The Season 2 premiere is streaming now with a Paramount+ subscription.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
