What To Know
- In the latest NCIS: Origins, Gibbs tells Bishop that Lala died in a plane crash.
- Mariel Molino (who plays Lala), Austin Stowell, and more cast members react to that reveal.
NCIS: Origins fans weren’t the only ones shocked to hear Gibbs (Mark Harmon) utter the words, “She died a long time ago,” about Lala (Mariel Molino) in the latest episode. It was a major moment for the cast, too, they revealed in a new video CBS shared on Thursday, October 29.
That “reveal” — we don’t buy it — from Gibbs came after he reunited with Bishop (Emily Wickersham) in the present when she joined him on his mission to find out who tried to kill him and is targeting someone else. He denied that Lala could be that person after Bishop caught him looking at the photo from the ’90s. He said she died in a plane crash.
“For the table read for 304, when we heard Mark Harmon in his voice say she died in a plane crash, it was like the air got sucked out of the room and I just remember people staring at him and people staring at me and it was one of those moments that I will not forget,” Molino shares in the video above. “It was very powerful and terrifyingly sad.”
Sonja Flemming/CBS
Austin Stowell, who plays Gibbs in the ’90s, said he knew from conversations with showrunner David J. North “that she had to go away at some point because she’s never talked about in the future, so there has to be a reason for that. Reading that she is killed in a plane crash, and of course we don’t know the details of that crash, but it doesn’t really matter in the moment. It makes it all the more real and this one, this one hurt,” he admits.
For Wickersham, who shared the scene with Harmon for that moment, “That was major information to hear especially because Gibbs is a man of very few words and doesn’t really share his personal life or things that are going on or have gone on in his life in the past, so that bit of information was huge.”
But Kyle Schmid, who plays Franks, calls “bulls**t,” arguing, “You can jump out of a plane. You can survive a plane crash. I don’t think she’s dead.”
Watch the video above for more, including Caleb Foote (Randy) acting out how he pictured Lala for that moment.
But what about you? Do you think Lala is dead? Let us know in the comments section below.
NCIS: Origins, Tuesdays, 10/9c, CBS