Why Leroy Jethro Gibbs Should Become The Fugitive

As far as iconic runs go Mark Harmon has it made having just completed an 18-year run as Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs on NCIS as he just recently made a quiet exit on the long-running drama in the fourth episode of its 19th season entitled “Great Wide Open”. However just as surely as James Bond will return following No Time To Die Leroy Jethro Gibbs will return as well as indicated by the executive producer and showrunner of the show Steve Binder in the following statement: 

“As an executive producer and dear friend, Mark continues to be an integral part of the fabric of the show,” Binder said in a statement. “Our north star has always been staying true to our characters, and that truth has always guided the stories we tell and where those characters go. So regarding the future of Gibbs, as long-time fans of the show may have noticed over the years…never count Leroy Jethro Gibbs out.”

 

 

Harmon’s departure from the series was a gradual process that began in the middle of NCIS’s 18th season in a storyline that saw Gibbs facing prison and losing his badge and ultimately culminated in a four-episode arc at the beginning of this season showcasing Gibbs at his most dangerous while the character also dealt with the internal question of what his life would look like outside of NCIS, catching bad guys, and building boats leading to his decision to stay behind in Alaska after one last case with his protege McGee (Sean Murray) in Monday night’s episode. Harmon will continue to serve as a producer on the show and it has been made clear by Binder that the door is still open for future appearances and I think those inevitable future storylines starring Mark Harmon are full of potential to not only conclude Gibbs story and character arc properly but to do so in a way that would take full advantage of the groundwork laid for the character in the show’s first 18 seasons and thus mirror a classic 1993 Harrison Ford movie by having Leroy Jethro Gibbs become The Fugitive. 

 

 

Avid viewers of NCIS will know that Gibbs and McGee set off on an important case in Alaska in Harmon’s final episode as a series regular and during that time Gibbs also had an arrest warrant out for him by the FBI for essentially kidnapping a serial killer in the previous episode which ended up with the serial killer who was a mirror reflection of Gibbs as a character killing himself with planted explosives but not before giving Gibbs one last clue to the case leading him to Alaska. Once the case was resolved Gibbs reflected to McGee while fishing with him against the backdrop of the beautiful Alaskan landscape that he hadn’t had this kind of sense of peace since his wife and daughter were killed and he's not ready to let it go. McGee and Gibbs parted ways on sorrowful terms, McGee taking one last look at his mentor from the seaplane he departs on before the episode ends with Gibbs at peace at last.

 

 

 However, we know this isn’t the end as Harmon will be back and there's more to Gibbs’s story than fishing all day every day in Alaska for the rest of his life. It would seem most likely that the next time we meet up with Gibbs onscreen we will see him working as a fisherman or logger in Alaska at peace with himself but not entirely whole all the same. The whole idea of Gibbs working as a lumberjack or fisherman in Alaska is very much in character for Gibbs who’s favorite hobby over the last 18 seasons has been building boats when he's not catching bad guys but it also very much evokes a Wolverine/Superman type tone that is hard to miss. If you remember the beginning of Wolverine: X-Men Origins Wolverine following his career in the military and special forces went to live in Canada and work as a logger. Clark Kent worked as a fisherman in one of his many world-traveling stint jobs at the beginning of Man of Steel and Gibbs himself helped a fisherman find closure in his final episode on the show. Also, Tom Welling’s Clark Kent on Smallville was iconic for his red plaid shirt as he worked on the Smallville farm, a look that mirrors Wolverine in the Canadian woods working as a logger and a look that would seem fitting to find Gibbs in when we meet up with him again.

 

 

 I think it's not unrealistic to think we could see Gibbs back as soon as the season 19 finale and we may pick up with Gibbs working as a logger in Alaska evoking Wolverine vibes just as Bishop was evoking female Jason Bourne vibes in her final episode just here recently and when we do meet up with Gibbs again he will probably end up being drawn back into working with NCIS again after something happens to him or somebody he has gotten close to in Alaska with the case having a connection that would require him to go back to D.C. and NCIS and work with his team once again to get justice. The opposite of course could be true and NCIS or somebody else could seek him out and recruit him in Alaska after a long day of logger work just as it was with Wolverine. In any case, Gibbs working in Alaska is the perfect place to leave him for the time being while Mark Harmon takes a hiatus from the show so that when he does return he can return in an epic fashion with a plethora of potential scenarios bringing him back into the fold out of retirement for one more case. 

 

 

There is also the question of what will be Gibbs’s final happy ending though as well. Over the last few seasons, a romance has brewed up between him and Sloane (Mario Bello) who recently departed the series as well the character moving to Afghanistan to do refugee work so there's a possibility the writers give those two characters a happy ending by having them get married and retire to Alaska or wherever a cabin is handy for both of them to live in. One of the more intriguing and exciting aspects of the Wolverine Origins film was while Wolverine was working as a logger in Canada he was living with his girlfriend in a cabin in the woods and this kind of ending for Gibbs could not only bring great flair and excitement to his storytelling ending but also complete his arc of moving on from his late wife of thirty years following all his failed marriages in the past with a love interest who finally does work out as he isn’t putting his work at NCIS first anymore and is finally at peace with the death of his wife and daughter. 

 

 

However, before Gibbs gets his happy ending though there are a number of loose ends that need to be tied up. The Dinozzo and Ziva reunion still needs to happen and that is a storyline that would only be done proper justice with Gibbs playing a prominent role throughout the arc as well as the continuation of the Bishop spy saga and so on. 

 

 

 

 

Regardless of these loose ends which could come before or after Gibbs’s peaceful retirement to Alaska with Sloane or even Colonel Mann (Susanna Thompson) who would be a great alternative as she served as Gibbs’s girlfriend and nearly wife during the 4th and 5th seasons of the drama the path to Gibbs living in relative solitary to re-marrying yet again could be an engaging storyline with cinematic quality storytelling to it with the potential being there for the writers to mirror the classic 1993 Harrison Ford film The Fugitive. My reasoning behind this lies not only in the fact that Gibbs is a very Harrison Ford-esque feeling role, to begin with as Harrison Ford was offered the role of Gibbs at the beginning of the series before Harmon won the role but also that Gibbs has a history of lawlessness in his past having murdered the drug dealer who killed his family as well as murdering a scumbag with diplomatic immunity that nearly killed Bishop’s love interest and Gibbs’s protege, Torres, a couple of seasons back. The whole premise of The Fugitive was that Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) was falsely convicted of a crime he didn’t do and pursued by Deputy U.S. Marshal Gerard Kimble (Tommy Lee Jones) for it but here the writers of NCIS have a spectacular opportunity to turn the tables on that premise and have Gibbs on the run and pursued by the law for crimes namely murders he actually did commit no matter how justified they were. 

 

 

 

New series regular Gary Cole who portrays FBI Special Agent Alden Parker just lost his badge because he let Gibbs go at the end of this most recent episode because he saw a lot of himself in Gibbs and was given a good word about him from Tobias Fornell but if all of a sudden Gibbs was a fugitive from justice its possible the FBI might take Parker back and give him the chance to fix his mistake by catching Gibbs and having him face a court of justice for his crimes. This kind of ambitious storyline could be triggered by the writers having Gibbs’s past murders being exposed to not only NCIS but the FBI and other agencies as well which would send the watchdogs after him and force Gibbs into a lifestyle of living on the run. This could allow the writers to buy themselves time by dragging out Gibbs’s ending while the series continues for a long time to come by checking in on Gibbs every once in a while working some job while lying low in some part of the country or another in anything from construction to anything else or Gibbs could even just lie low in the Alaskan wilderness until the writers are finally ready for Gibbs to get together with Sloane or whoever and they could go run away together and live a peaceful retirement somewhere tropical or wilderness-like in a cabin. And if Gibbs ever needed to come back to D.C. and work with his team again for an urgent case from the show’s deep and rich history of rogues over the decades then that could be done in incognito mode just as Gibbs did in the early part of season 19. 

 

 

 

Of course, exposing Gibbs’s past crimes and sending him on the run wouldn’t be something that could be undone by the writers and they may just want to stick to him living it up as a logger in Alaska with him coming out of hibernation for a case or two here and there in the future until his eventual happy ending with Sloane or even Mann but if they chose to have Gibbs become The Fugitive they could certainly still give Gibbs a happy ending and at the same time evoke an incredible amount of excitement around his storyline every time we meet up with him again onscreen in the future evoking the classic Harrison Ford film for inspiration which would provide plenty of storytelling ammunition and material if NCIS were to continue on and on for a long time to come and Gibbs’s happy ending would want to be saved for closer to the end of the series if not the actual series finale if that day even ever comes. 

 

 

Moving forward NCIS has a lot of exciting storylines going for it with a lot of players operating even beyond the context of NCIS with former team members living out just as exciting adventures offscreen as the MCRT onscreen and the potential is certainly there for reunions of old and new members of the crime-solving family as the team’s job will continue to go on with a wide variety of crimes to be solved involving plenty of intrigue never stopping in the world of the Navy and Marines. Gary Cole filling in for Mark Harmon as the seasoned veteran on the team moving forward will be a great addition to the NCIS world as Cole’s time on Chuck as Sarah Walker’s con-man father proved he has great chemistry with eccentric characters and the folks over at NCIS for sure fit that description. NCIS has a long tapestry of history to draw from in bringing back old and familiar faces but also has great capability in generating new stories and bringing fresh storylines to the screen as the writers of NCIS have proven time and time again and NCIS Season 19 is definitely no exception being one in another of the many of the show’s rebirths over the years. So stay tuned for more news and articles on all things NCIS as even though Mark Harmon is no longer a series regular Gibbs isn’t gone for good and the world of NCIS is expanding and evolving in a multitude of exciting ways that always seems to manage to come back full circle with the show’s origins on JAG dating back to 2003 and the Air Force One-inspired pilot episode that followed it. 

 

LEROY JETHRO GIBBS WILL RETURN