NCIS: Origins Finale Shocker! Is Lala Dead?

 

“I loved her all along. I still do,” NCIS: Origins‘ Narrator Gibbs told us at the close of Monday night’s Season 1 finale, as the camera zoomed on on Special Agent Lala Dominguez’s seemingly lifeless form, after a harrowing car crash. “This is a story I don’t tell. I can’t find the words. But it never stops running through my head — the story of her.”

But as one door closes… another opens?

Good lord, you’ve got some gorgeous eyes on you,” a redhead real estate agent named Diane told Gibbs in a scene prior, upon arriving to survey the house he is finally putting on the market. “Those babies are bright.”

After you dab your eyes dry, see what NCIS: Origins co-showrunners Gina Lucita Monreal (who wrote the finale) and David J. North shared with TVLine about choosing this tragic love story to launch the prequel series, the manner of Lala’s (apparent) death, and the big question raised by a future Mrs. Gibbs’ debut

TVLINE | How much of this season finale was locked down a while ago, and how much did you come up with as you were sitting down to write it?

GINA LUCITA MONREAL | I’d say about half and half. We knew where we wanted to take most of the characters, and I think that a lot of it was dictated by canon, because we knew we were bringing in the [Military Police investigator Lara] Macy character [from NCIS: Los Angeles‘ two-part pilot] and we had to color within those lines. But in every episode we do leave some wiggle room to see where the characters want to go, and we did that in the finale as well.