“We’re excited to see everyone and come back and find out the fate of Lala,” NCIS: Origins executive producer David J. North told TV Insider after the shocking Season 1 finale that ended with Mariel Molino‘s character in a horrific car crash.
In the Season 1 finale, Lala’s friend Macy (Claire Berger) began digging into the death of the man who killed Gibbs’ (Austin Stowell) wife and daughter, Pedro Hernandez. To protect Gibbs, Lala used their friendship to convince her to drop the case by claiming she had known more than she had. Lala was on the way to tell Gibbs he was in the clear when that crash happened, with her car flipping over. She “was coming to tell me she had saved me. I would only find out later what she did for me. But that’s not what made me love her. I loved her all along. I still do,” Mark Harmon‘s Gibbs said in voiceover.
The first season of the NCIS prequel was about “the story of her,” Lala, and it certainly does seem like this could be it for the character. After all, between that voiceover and a conversation that Gibbs has with Nate (Peter Cambor) in the “Legends” backdoor pilot on NCIS for the spinoff NCIS: Los Angeles, it seems like Gibbs doesn’t find out what Lala did for him from her. Austin Stowell and executive producers David J. North and Gina Lucita Monreal were very vague when TV Insider spoke with them about that Season 1 finale cliffhanger in April.
“Truth be told, I don’t know. We are all being kept in the dark,” Stowell said. “I didn’t even know until the table read that that’s what would happen. All of us were kept in the dark about that scene. When we originally got those scripts kind of as a two-part 17 and 18, the last scene was omitted. So all I knew was that she went to my apartment, that she started to write down the note and then heard the voicemail.”
According to North, “Going into this project, Gina and I knew we wanted to take big swings. Amy Reisenbach at the network has just been so supportive, everyone at the network and David Stapf at the studio. Mariel, the whole cast knew what we were doing, that we were going to take big swings and they just show up every day and are willing to do the work at an exceptional level. And all that said, tune into Season 2 to see Lala’s fate.”
When it comes to how Gibbs will react should Lala die, Stowell joked, “He would obviously handle it with measure and with grace as he does most anything. He wouldn’t have a knee-jerk reaction at all.” Then he got serious: “This would be, what he would consider, another female loss at his doing, and this would only further insulate him. It would make him draw more within himself. And it might be what actually happens because the guy that we know that Mark played for years and years is an incredibly isolated human being and trusts no one but himself. And so it would fall in line should that be the case.”
He added that he hopes Molino returns because he loves working with her and contended, “It would also make sense for Gibbs to lose somebody that he’s gotten close to, although I don’t think they’ve gotten close enough yet to lose her, in my personal opinion.”
There’s always the possibility that Lala survives the crash but must leave (or decides to leave) NIS for some reason, meaning we could see Mariel Molino in Season 2 briefly and perhaps again in the future.
But what do you think? Do you think Lala will survive or die after that car crash? Let us know in the poll below, then head to the comments section to share your thoughts.
NCIS: Origins, Season 2, Fall 2025, Tuesdays, 9/8c, CBS