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With TV shows such as Marshals, Boston Blue, CIA, Sheriff County, and Tracker, CBS has quietly been dominating the crime thriller and legal drama space on network television in the past few years. However, despite the popularity and critical acclaim of said series, they all live in the shadow of the network's flagship franchise, which has remained on the air since 2003 and spawned six spin-offs to date. When Season 3 of the latest offshoot premieres this fall, the 23-year-old franchise will come full circle with the return of its most famous character.
The sixth spin-off to the long-running NCIS universe, NCIS: Origins, follows the early days of Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon) in 1991 as he joins the National Intelligence Service and learns the tricks of the trade. Although Harmon narrated the first two seasons, the biggest star in the main NCIS series is poised to appear in Season 3 of Origins this fall. As someone who has been following Harmon's career since he played Freddy Shoop in Summer School, I can't wait to see how his rousing return to NCIS: Origins is handled.
'NCIS: Origins' Is the Highest-Rated Franchise Spin-off To Date
Mark Harmon portrayed Leroy Jethro Gibbs, a former Marine sniper and commander of the Naval Criminal Investigation Service, in 435 episodes of CBS's mothership procedural. The character left to find adventure in Alaska in 2021. The franchise continued with various spin-offs set in different cities, including Los Angeles, New Orleans, Sydney, Hawai'i, and the latest, which is New York. However, with Gibbs's glaring absence in most of the spin-offs, none of the other series in the franchise reached the popularity or critical acclaim of the original. That is, until NCIS: Origins debuted in 2024 and brought back the beloved Gibbs as a bright-eyed newbie.
Boasting an 88% Rotten Tomatoes rating (the highest in the franchise) and a 7.5 IMDb rating (the second highest behind the original series), NCIS: Origins takes place at San Diego's Camp Pendleton in 1991. Gibbs (played by Austin Stowell) joins the NIS under the command of Mike Franks (played by Muse Watson in the original and Kyle Schmid in Origins) and learns how to become the keen detective we all know and love. Harmon narrates the series and appears briefly twice, which may explain why it's the highest-rated spin-off to date.
After narrating several episodes in the first two seasons, Harmon is set to make a physical return in a major Season 3 arc when the show returns to the CBS fall 2026 schedule. By giving fans two versions of the most iconic franchise character at different points in his life, NCIS is going to get even better.
How Will Mark Harmon's Return in 'NCIS: Origins' Be Executed in Season 3?
The first thing to know about NCIS: Origins Season 3 is that it will feature 10 episodes, unlike 18 in the first two seasons. Although truncated, Mark Harmon is scheduled to appear in all 10 episodes in a contemporary storyline that takes place in 2026. According to Deadline, the narrative will directly tie in to a case that Gibbs investigated while based at Camp Pendleton in 1991, marking the first time that Gibbs will feature prominently in the entire spin-off story.
More specifically, Gibbs's upcoming arc in Season 3 of Origins stems from a two-part crossover episode between NCIS and Origins in 2025, when a cold case about the death of a California naval officer is reopened in the present day. Harmon will also continue narrating the upcoming season and serve as executive producer.
While it's physically impossible for the younger and older versions of Gibbs to interact in NCIS: Origins, through flashbacks, viewers could theoretically catch glimpses of both at different times in their careers. The only thing better than Harmon's return to the franchise he helped prop up is having twice as much Gibbs onscreen. With such a realistic possibility in NCIS: Origins Season 3, CBS's long-running franchise is going back to the future in the best way imaginable.
