I love Mariel Molino. She’s talented, magnetic, she gets the emotional core of her character. I genuinely wish her Lala had a real story arc — she and Mariel deserve that.
But I can’t stand what’s happening in NCIS: Origins lately. When was the last time Gibbs even mentioned Shannon? I swear it’s been a hundred years since we heard her name.
How long has it been in the Origins timeline since Shannon and Kelly’s deaths? A year? Two? Against thirty years of grief we saw in the main show — thirty years of pain, silence, sawdust and boats in a basement, coffee cups and ghosts — this feels so hollow.
I don’t know what other viewers were expecting from Origins, but I wanted canon. I wanted depth. I wanted answers to the questions fans have been asking for over twenty years.
I wanted to see Diane — the real Diane, the one who lit up every scene, the woman who was sharp, funny, flawed, and unforgettable.
I wanted to understand how Gibbs ever let someone in again after Shannon. How that love even became possible. How a man who built his entire life around loss decided to marry again.
For God’s sake — not because he “fell for Lala” (a woman who doesn’t even exist in the original show!) and married Diane because “it was safer.” That’s a lie. A blatant, painful lie.
In the original show, Gibbs loved Diane. Her leaving shattered him. Even in season 3, he was still doing his little ritual dances around that memory — the boat he had built for her, the one that carried all his grief and love. That wasn’t nothing. Diane mattered to him so deeply that after the divorce, he built that boat and named it after her. The same way he built “Kelly.” That’s how important she was.
And now they’re telling us Diane didn’t matter — while literally showing us that she did. We saw the way he looked at her. The way he opened up to her. The way he knelt down to kiss her. That wasn’t indifference. That was love.
And then — bam! Again, Gibbs is a confused little boy who can’t make up his mind, staring at Lala with that same pathetic, guilty-puppy expression. And the background chorus of Randy and Mary Jo is singing, “He loves Lala,” “He’s only with Diane because it’s was safe.”
That’s not how you write good stories.
That’s not how drama works.
That’s how you write when you’re doing it last minute, when you’re chasing fanservice, when you can’t show and start telling instead — pouring cheap words into our ears.
That’s not storytelling. That’s gaslighting.
Origins is gaslighting us — and it’s an act of violence against canon.
Instead of respect for canon, we got lies. We got fanservice. We got Gibbs rewritten into a soap opera lead.
Gibbs — who never wavered between two women (unless one of them was Shannon’s ghost) — suddenly turned into a man with puppy eyes, torn between “the girl he’s marrying” and “the one he can’t stop staring at.”
And the worst part? In episode 4 of season 2, Gibbs literally looks like a guilty puppy — the kind that just peed on the floor and is now glancing around, hoping no one noticed.
That’s not character development. That’s character assassination.
Why? Just why? The only answer I can see is the cynical one — marketing. Feed the new viewers the Gibbs–Lala dynamic in the first season, because Diane wasn’t in his life yet during this period.
But come on! They could have just left Gibbs and his grief alone, let him actually grieve in the first season — without Lala. Without cheap fanservice.
Let Lala be an independent, strong female character, not the hundred-and-fifth “woman of Gibbs.” That would have been respect for the characters. Lala could have been a character with her own agency, challenges, and growth. Instead, she’s used as a prop to manipulate Gibbs’ storyline, reducing a potentially compelling arc to cheap fanservice.
Writers could have introduced Lala in a way that enriches the story without negating established characters. Show her as a full person, not as a replacement or distraction. Respecting the canon would have created tension and depth — not cheap drama.
I so much loved NCIS. And now... it hurts. It really, really hurts.
Because I’ve given this show years of my life. So much love. So much analysis.
We — the fandom — dissected every look Gibbs ever gave, every pause, every word, every scar, every rule. We wrote fics where we tried to fill the gaps canon left behind. We built stories from fragments.
And now? The writers of Origins just spit on all of it.
And before anyone says it — I’m not against Lala. I’m not against Mariel. I’m against breaking canon for the sake of cheap drama.
I’m against turning Gibbs — our Gibbs — into a wide-eyed teenager who forgot his wife and daughter were murdered.
He’s forty, not fifteen. He’s haunted by grief. He’s the man who built boats to keep from drowning in his sorrow.
He’s not supposed to forget.
Gibbs’ grief isn’t just a plot point — it defines his morality, decisions, and relationships. Treating him as confused and emotionally naive erases decades of character development.
You know… this isn’t even young Gibbs, the one we saw in canon played by Sean Harmon. That Gibbs had scars, but he was whole.
Remember his meeting with young Shannon at the train station? He was more grown-up there than forty-year-old Gibbs in Origins.
Can you even imagine Sean’s Gibbs acting like a guilty little puppy who just peed on the floor?
And it’s not about Austin — Austin Stowell is a wonderful actor. He’s performing what the writers wrote, what the directors filmed. And it’s a disaster…
This isn’t just disappointment; it’s a betrayal of everything fans have invested in. It tells us that decades of careful storytelling can be overwritten for short-term drama.
NCIS Origins - this isn’t just disappointment. It’s grief all over again — for the show, for the characters, for the version of Gibbs that used to mean something real.
And that’s the thing — I loved the first episodes of Origins. They were deep, grown-up, honest drama. I couldn’t believe our luck — it felt like NCIS was finally honoring its roots, finally treating Gibbs’ pain with the weight it deserves. But now… now I’m this close to giving up.
And I’ve never given up on an NCIS show before — not a single one. Not the original. Not spin-offs.
I stood by all of them. I was loyal to every single one.
And now I’m just… broken.
