When will 'NCIS' Season 18 return? Show's 400th episode part of multi-episode arc linked to premiere
Much to the dismay of 'NCIS' fans, COVID-19 meant that Season 17 was cut short. Four episodes were left unfilled, which meant that unlike previous years the truncated season ending with Episode 20 had no cliffhanger. The season 17 'finale' was the 398th episode of 'NCIS' overall. While Season 18's premiere episode will be the 399th episode, the long-awaited 400th episode milestone will be breached with the season's second episode. This peak moment is rarefied air for a non-animated, scripted drama series that has managed to hold on to its prime time slot and popularity, despite being on the air this long, surpassed only by 'Law & Order: SVU'.
Where we left off
When we bid goodbye to 'NCIS' is Season 17, we saw Mark Harmon's Gibbs do something that we never expected him to do -- open up to someone about his own traumas. Gibbs was so affected by the vet Joe Smith's Pearl Harbor story that before he carried Joe's ashes to Pearl Harbor, he decided to talk to McGee (Sean Murray). He asked him to grab a seat in his living room and hear what he had to say about his wartime experiences in Kuwait. “You come home, and you’re like half a person,” he tells McGee, underlining how broken he is about how people he is closest to either die or leave. It is a huge growth for the character to be this vulnerable.
What we'd like to see
According to early reports, 'NCIS' will pick up where a previous episode left off -- not the Season 17 finale though. Instead, the show is playing around with the timeline to revisit Gibbs' mysterious mission in 'Musical Chairs', which aired as the eighth episode of Season 17. 'NCIS' co-showrunner Steve Binder teased what to expect in an interview, saying: "we had an episode last year called ‘Musical Chairs’, where Gibbs disappears from the squad room to go on a mission, and then he shows up at the end of the episode with a black eye. We are going to pick up Season 18 with that mission that Gibbs was on, back in time. We’re in a pre-COVID world for a little while." What's more, this will be a multi-episode storyline. So can we hope that mysterious mission will have something to do with fan-favorite Ziva David, especially with the 400th episode in the story arc?
When is it returning
For now, though no dates are confirmed, 'NCIS' is readying for a November premiere, set almost exactly a year after 'Musical Chairs' originally aired. The earliest we could anticipate the show coming back is November 10, since Election Day is on November 3.