Authentic Mike Franks Actor Returns To NCIS After 8 Years In New Trippy Set Picture

After 8 years, the unique Mike Franks actor returns to NCIS in a brand new set picture. CBS’s 2025-2026 TV schedule might have began late, however with all of its main exhibits now airing, some are capable of be extra experimental with their choices. The NCIS franchise is one in all them, because the procedural universe levels its first crossovers in years — this time, between the flagship and NCIS: Origins.

The NCIS franchise now airs on Tuesdays, taking up CBS’ primetime block after broadcasting Monday nights for a number of years. This additionally permits for a neater approach to plan its newest crossover regardless of NCIS and NCIS: Origins being set in several time and house. The particular two-hour occasion was confirmed to carry again Mark Harmon and Roma Maffia as older variations of Gibbs and Vera, however they weren’t the one legacy actors within the particular.

As confirmed by a brand new set picture from the NCIS: Origins leg of the crossover from co-showrunner David J. North, Muse Watson was on-set to movie the getting old scene of Franks. For context, the sequence begins with Kyle Schmid on the display, and as time passes, he step by step morphs into Watson’s model. Take a look at the aforementioned picture beneath, in addition to different snaps from the crossover’s manufacturing:

The NCIS 2025 crossover is general good. It options so many nostalgic Easter eggs, beginning with Harmon’s bodily return as Gibbs. That mentioned, if there is a main wasted alternative in it, it is positively CBS’s failure to reunite Watson and Harmon’s older Franks and Gibbs. Watson was already on set for his NCIS: Origins timelapse sequence, it should not have been tough for the present to give you one other hallucination scene between Franks and his protégé.

For context, after Franks’ brutal loss of life in NCIS season 8, the CBS procedural has been capable of proceed bringing him again via Gibbs’ imagined conversations with him. Watson’s character used to look at any time when Harmon’s character was at a crossroad. He functioned as a sounding board for the then-MCRT chief. These scenes make seeing Austin Stowell and Schmid’s variations of their characters in NCIS: Origins extra fascinating.

At this level, it is anyone’s guess if Watson and Harmon are going to share the display ever once more. Seeing the 2 variations of Franks, nonetheless, is a reminder of how brilliantly Schmid was forged as a youthful model of the cigarette-smoking agent. Hopefully CBS finds extra alternatives to carry legacy actors again to NCIS.

NCIS airs new episodes each Tuesday, 8 PM ET on CBS.