NCIS: Origins Cliffhanger: Is Gibbs About to Take Out Pedro Hernandez? Austin Stowell Teases Timetable
The following contains spoilers from the Nov. 25 episode of CBS’ NCIS: Origins.
This week on NCIS: Origins, we flashed back to “Eight Months Ago,” when Gibbs (played by Austin Stowell) first returned home, on crutches, from Kuwait/Operation Desert Storm — to a tragically emptied house.
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Gibbs didn’t live there long at all after, and instead relocated to a tiny apartment. His first visitor was Special Agent Mike Franks, stopping by on a day off. Franks, though, got no warm welcome.
“I wanna know why you are taking a day off,” Gibbs asked, “while the man who killed my family is still out there!”
Franks had no easy answer, and instead brought Gibbs to see the car that Shannon and Kelly died in.
“Tell me…. Say it all,” Gibbs asked, eyeballing the wreckage. Franks recapped that Gibbs’ wife had witnessed a murder at a marina gas station, and ID’d as the trigger man a drug dealer for a Mexican cartel. That was enough to arrest the shooter, “but we couldn’t find him,” Franks explained.
Gibbs accused Franks of not protecting his wife. Franks made clear that they had assigned an agent, Mitchell, but he took a head shot while driving Gibbs’ wife and daughter to a safe house, and died instantly behind the wheel.
“And your wife and daughter—”
“Say their names,” Gibbs ordered.
“Shannon and Kelly died in the crash.”
Franks confirmed that Pedro Hernandez himself had fired the fateful shot, then fled to Mexico. “And once these guys cross the border, it gets complicated. We lost him.” Gibbs pressed Franks for any and all intel on Hernandez’s whereabouts, but Franks maintained, “You know everything I know, Gunny.”
Gibbs would proceed to pester Mary Jo with phone calls, and Franks himself with drop-bys, persisting in his pursuit of intel. It got to a point where Franks confronted a drunken Gibbs at his apartment. “You were supposed to protect her!” Gibbs again wailed, and when Franks spat back, “You think you’re doing Shannon proud?,” Gibbs slugged his future boss. Franks wrestled Gibbs to the floor, where Gibbs succumbed and softly wept.
“I didn’t want to be here anymore. That’s how I got hurt,” he said, alluding to his suicidal actions afetr first learning about Shannon and Kelly. “I can’t keep living with them gone that if the guy that did this is out there living, too.”
Gibbs’ confession clearly moves Franks, for the next time Gibbs came by NIS, Franks announced out loud, “I can’t tell you where the bastard is hiding, Gunny” — before plopping a file on the desk before him. The file on Hernandez. “I’m gonna take a leak,” Franks said, leaving Gibbs alone to do with the file what he may, which in this case meant quickly jotting down some notes on Pedro’s car and known locations.
“I was supposed to be dead,” narrator Gibbs said, “but after that, all I wanted was to be healed. All I wanted was to get off those damn crutches so I could go out and do what needed to be done.
“But the real heeling wasn’t about a cast or a broken bone,” narrator Gibbs continued. “It wasn’t about me at all, and it wasn’t about getting vengeance, either. It was about the one person” — Mike Franks — “who saw I was broken, and needed to be saved, and dropped everything to pick me up off the floor.”
That said, Flashback Gibbs now has everything he needs to go after Hernandez. But how soon will be embark on that revenge mission? The moment he is off those crutches?
We put that question to NCIS: Origins star Austin Stowell during his recent visit to TVLine’s New York office, and he answered, quite plainly:
“If someone you love was murdered… and all of the sudden you had the key to the door, and you knew that the person who was responsible for their death was on the other side of it… how long would you wait?”
Want scoop on NCIS: Origins, or for any other TV show ? Shoot an email to [email protected], and your question may be answered via Matt’s Inside Line!
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