NCIS’ Biggest Cast Exits, Ranked

It’s that time once again, “NCIS” fans: time to say goodbye to a beloved cast member. 

Tuesday’s milestone 500th episode of the hit CBS procedural saw NCIS Director Leon Vance killed in the line of duty, with cast member Rocky Carroll departing the series after 18 years. (Check out our full post mortem Q&A with Carroll here.) But of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve bid farewell to a member of the NCIS team. In fact, through 23 seasons, we’ve seen more than a dozen significant departures, ranging from mere career changes to heart-wrenching character deaths. And some have hurt more than others.

In the wake of Vance’s passing, TVLine is revisiting the biggest “NCIS” exits from the past 20-plus years, ranking them by how greatly they impacted the plot/other characters. Check out our list, and then weigh in with your own additions and rankings in a comment below.

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Granted, Jimmy Palmer’s wife passed away Linda Reagan-like, off-screen and during a time jump — a victim of COVID-19, as was slowwwwly revealed during a mid-Season 18 episode. But Jimmy’s reaction within that episode broke our hearts, especially as he noted to Gibbs how “the hospital wouldn’t let me see her” due to COVID precautions. As with Director Vance and his own better half, Jimmy’s loss stung for a bit, though we as viewers had only gotten to know Breena over a half-dozen scattered episodes.

One episode after Jack Sloane decided to leave the team and make camp in Afghanistan, “NCIS” delivered a somewhat unexpected and incredibly sad resolution to the Emily Fornell/opioid addiction arc that had started with the Season 16 finale. Earlier in Season 18, a series of episodes “jumped back in time” to November of 2019, to reveal to us Gibbs and Fornell’s hunt for the leader of the drug ring that had supplied opioids to Emily. Their bid to cut off the head of the snake, however, would not prevent Emily from relapsing off-screen, setting the stage for Tobias’ silent, anguished discovery that his little girl had died from an overdose.

“The Waltons” family patriarch Ralph Waite had made only a handful of appearances over five seasons as Gibbs’ once-estranged father, but as with most of the series’ parent/adult child relationships, every moment we spent with them together was to be treasured. The reveal that Jackson had died of a stroke in the Season 11 finale came as no great surprise, seeing as Waite had passed away in real life months prior, but series lead Mark Harmon finely conveyed the always guarded Gibbs’ sense of loss in what proved to be a lovely tribute episode.

The loss of Gibbs’ father was later echoed in the Season 22 finale, when Gary Cole’s Alden Parker (who replaced Gibbs as NCIS team leader) discovered his father Roman, played by Francis X. McCarthy, had been murdered by crime boss Carla Marino. That set off a multi-episode revenge tour that ended with Parker taking out Carla once and for all. (We think.) 

Mario Bello’s exit was not at all unexpected — it had been announced seven months prior — so it was all a matter of how the team’s operational psychologist would break away from the pack. In an episode that aired midway through Season 18, Jack hinted at a move to Costa Rica, yet when all was said and done, she instead semi-impetuously decided to stay behind in Afghanistan after a mission, to follow in the shoes of a local chaperone who had taken care of her years ago when she was held hostage by “The Monster.” The goodbye kiss that she elicited from Gibbs at the very least showed us that Boss still knows a great catch when he sees one (and even when she isn’t a redhead).

Though Ziva’s father and Director Vance’s wife had only 11 appearances between the two of them over some four seasons, their deaths as the result of a drive-by shooting that riddled the Vance home with bullets, in Season 10’s “Shabbat Shalom,” stands as one of the most emotional “NCIS” hours. The series would repeatedly revisit Leon Vance’s grief as a widowed father, while Cote de Pablo’s work in the scene where Ziva learns of her abba‘s fate will never not bring us chills.

Jenny arrived on the scene in Season 3 with one of the series’ richest backstories, as, yes, an ex of Gibbs’, but also as a woman who had dedicated a decade of her life to solve her Army colonel father’s death by “suicide.” Reuniting with Gibbs at NCIS (as Director Thomas Morrow’s successor), Jenny surreptitiously sought to get the goods on her father’s suspected killer, René Benoit, aka “La Grenouille” or “The Frog.” But in the end, it was another part of Jenny’s past — a Russian crime lord’s lover whose assassination she couldn’t pull off — that came back to haunt her, leading to a Mojave Desert diner shootout in which the baddies were all killed, but alas, so was Director Shepard herself, devastating the team back home greatly.

Pauley Perrette’s exit after 15 years came as little surprise, given that it had been announced seven months prior. We just didn’t know that the streetside murder of MI6 agent/NCIS liaison Clayton Reeves — who, like Abby, was shot during a not-so-random mugging — would precipitate Abby’s sendoff. Because Reeves died a hero in the course of protecting his colleague, Abby committed herself to following in his footsteps by shepherding a charity for homeless women. She then accompanied Reeves’ body back to his London home before embarking on this new chapter in her life.

Henry’s own, abrupt exit after two seasons made up for any shock value that Perrette’s own departure lacked. And though Abby unarguably had made her “Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs!” mark over 15 seasons, successor Kasie Hines (played by Diona Reasonover) has quite ably filled the forensics lab with the circuitous fast-talking we have come to expect.

We would have expected to be a lot more moved than we actually were when Special Agent Ellie Bishop opted to “peace out” on Nick and the rest of the team in the Season 18 finale, after surreptitiously framing herself as a onetime NSA leak — especially since Emily Wickersham’s split with the show had not been announced! 

And yet, while, yes, Torres has been left with a romantic wound to lick, Bishop’s exit was somewhat overshadowed by Gibbs’ simultaneous “death.” Plus, whereas Ziva David was not immediately replaced on the team upon her own departure, Special Agent Jessica Knight (played by Katrina Law) stepped right in to pick up the badass female slack.

Wickersham also popped back up in Season 23, with Bishop reuniting with Torres to prove her innocence before diving back into the shadowy world of international espionage. (She did ask him to come with her… but he said no.)  

It may surprise some less-seasoned “NCIS” fans that, yes, Mike Franks at one point was actually alive, and not a ghost or hallucination. But the fact that the character popped up now and again in the years since his tragic Season 8 death — fatally stabbed while thwarting the Port-to-Port Killer whose next target was Gibbs — is testament to the important role he had played in Jethro’s life, as the mentor who taught the NCIS team leader everything he knows. (And now we get to see the duo’s early days together on the prequel “NCIS: Origins.”) 

The former Secret Service agent was DiNozzo’s OG partner in zingy office banter, thought she arguably called out his frat boy antics more than her oneday successor, Ziva David, ever would. Even so, the dynamic between Tony and “Kate” was one of the series’ early hallmarks, and that made the exact circumstances of her death in the Season 2 finale — felled out of nowhere by a sniper’s bullet fired by Ari “Ziva’s half-brother” Haswari, just as she was responding to a rare compliment of Tony’s — all the more devastating.

An absolute pillar of the NCIS community, Vance had served as the team’s chief since he debuted in Season 5, eventually taking over full-time as Director after Jenny Shepard’s death. So it was a tough blow to fans when he was shot and killed by a corrupt CID agent in Season 23, heading into the afterlife with an assist from Adam Campbell’s Young Ducky. 

Rocky Carroll admits it wasn’t his idea to leave the show, but when the writers presented him with Vance’s farewell storyline, “the part of me that’s the team player was instantly like, ‘That’s a hell of a storyline. I think that’s going to be really great,'” he recalled to TVLine. And thankfully, Carroll will still be a part of the “NCIS” family behind the camera: He’s set to direct at least one upcoming episode of the series, having helmed nearly 30 episodes thus far.

The former Mossad officer had big shoes to fill upon her Season 3 arrival, succeeding as she did NCIS Special Agent Caitlin Todd (who had died at the hands of no less than Ziva’s half-brother, Ari). Yet de Pablo instantly made her mark, establishing a razor-sharp banter with Michael Weatherly’s DiNozzo and crafting Ziva into a truly enigmatic TV character. 

When news broke over the summer ahead of Season 11 that de Pablo and the CBS drama were unable to agree to terms for a new contact, the fan reaction was fierce — 1,200 comments on the first news story alone! And while Ziva’s eventual, double-episode exit story was compelling, touching, and in the very end more than a bit romantic, she was a hard act to follow in her own right — so much so that de Pablo’s cameos in recent years were greatly welcome. (Plus, she and Michael Weatherly got to reunite, if only for one season, on the Paramount+ spin-off “NCIS: Tony & Ziva.”)

David McCallum passed away on Sept. 25, 2023 — just as the 148-day Writers Guild strike was about to end, meaning the “NCIS” writers had a No. 1 priority as they went back to work. Though Ducky had only appeared intermittently over the last few seasons (3-4 episodes each, and remotely as of late), McCallum was the long-running procedural’s last remaining original cast member. So when it was discovered, by Jimmy, that the good doctor had passed away in his sleep, the episode “The Stories We Leave Behind” was every bit as wonderful as it deserved to be, abundant with emotional reactions (especially from Dr. Palmer), meaningful flashbacks, and one pretty perfect cameo.

In Michael Weatherly’s final “NCIS” episode, Special Agent Tony DiNozzo followed his heart, and then his head, setting the stage for the original cast member’s exit. Upon hearing about the bombing of the David family farmhouse in Israel, Tony made tracks for the airport, but Abby and McGee intercepted him at his home to relay the very bad news that Ziva indeed died in the attack. Tony’s furor that followed was soon enough interrupted by his introduction to Tali, a daughter whom Ziva gave birth to years ago.

At the end of that Season 13 finale, DiNozzo shared with Gibbs his decision to leave the team and take care of Tali, starting with a trip to Israel and followed by a visit to the Paris that “Ziva loves.” “I’m everything to that little girl now,” is how Tony put it, “and I’ve never been anybody’s everything before.”

While we now can find some comfort in the fact that 1) Ziva in fact was alive and 2) Tony eventually confirmed that (albeit off-screen, years after Weatherly’s exit), the fact is that Tony was a one-of-a-kind presence, both hero and sometime heel. A master of both bon mots and the occasional groaner. A cinephile who in some ways lived the life of a dashing, camera-ready crimefighter. McGee is a very fine “Very Special Agent,” and Torres nicely fills the role of reformed rake, but DiNozzo stands as one of the characters whose absence most resonates with us.

Harmon reportedly was ready to hang up Gibbs’ cap after Season 18, but learned that if he did so, CBS might not renew “NCIS.” As such, he agreed to return for what TVLine later reported that would be only “a few” episodes.

Sure enough, in but the fourth episode of Season 19 — after he, McGee et al solved the case of a contract killer hired by a conglomerate to clear the way for an environment-poisoning copper mine  — Gibbs decided not to take back his badge, gun, and job, but to stay in Alaska, where the multi-episode arc had most recently led him.

Yes, we got a taste of what a Gibbs-less “NCIS” team would be like after his suspension, and Gary Cole has filled in ably as new team leader Alden Parker. Still, this was the biggest exit in the series’ long run, and as the recent 500th episode proved, Gibbs is still a huge presence, years after his departure.

Which “NCIS” exit hit you the hardest? Let us know in a comment below.