NCIS Pulls Off A Dormant 16-Year Gimmick For 2026's Most Important Comeback

Image courtesy of MovieStillsDb Published Sep 18, 2026, 3:58 PM EDT Cathal Gunning has been writing about movies, television, culture, and politics online and in print since 2017. He worked as a Senior Editor in Adbusters Media Foundation from 2018-2019 and wrote for WhatCulture in early 2020. He has been a Senior Features Writer for ScreenRant since 2020. While NCIS hasn’t relied on one classic procedural plotting gimmick since 2010, its upcoming spinoff NCIS: New York is pulling this hoary old trope out of retirement for the new show’s arrival. The thing about clichés is that they become overused for a reason. Every tired trope was, at one point or another, a fresh and daring innovation that won over viewers, readers, or other consumers of a piece of media. Then, this trope became so popular that it was reused by later shows, or movies, or books, and revisited again, and again, so many times that, eventually, viewers got tired of the very idea. Some of the best examples of these clichés come in long-running network procedural franchises like Dick Wolf’s Law & Order shows, the NCIS universe, the CSI shows, or the 9-1-1 franchise. For these shows to tell so many stories across so many locations over so many seasons, they inevitably end up relying on stock characters and recognizable tropes. Thus, it is hardly a shock to discover that the upcoming NCIS spinoff NCIS: New York recast Hawaii Five-O’s Scott Caan as a roguish maverick partner for LL Cool J’s reserved, implacable NCIS: Los Angeles hero Special Agent Sam Hanna. The “Loose cannon wild card and stern, deadpan by-the-book partner” routine has been around since at least 1974’s cop comedy Freebie and the Bean, and has since cropped up in everything from the Lethal Weapon movies to the Rush Hour franchise to Wolf’s CBS procedural CIA. NCIS: New York Begins With A Personal Tragedy MovieStillsDB On the topic of tropes that recur because they still work as well as ever, perhaps it shouldn’t come as a shock to find out that NCIS: New York’s pilot will begin with a personal tragedy for its main character. The episode’s synopsis confirms that Hanna’s New York adventure begins with the discovery of the dead body of his friend, Navy reservist Jack Halloway. Hanna’s decision to investigate this death starts the story of the series proper. This inciting incident is hardly unheard of, and Reacher’s spinoff Neagley recently centred the story of its first season around Maria Sten’s title character looking into the similarly mysterious death of her old acquaintance. However, what’s notable about this use of the trope is that it’s not even the first time the NCIS franchise has played this particular card. Fans of the Scott Bakula vehicle NCIS: New Orleans, which aired 155 episodes across seven seasons between 2014 and 2021, will remember it particularly well. CBS Used The Same Gimmick In Launching NCIS: New Orleans The introductory episodes of NCIS: New Orleans were a crossover event, with “City (Parts I and II)” allowing the original show to introduce the spinoff’s main characters via interactions with NCIS’s hero Gibbs DQWQ and the rest of the original show’s team. In these introductory episodes, which were produced as part of NCIS season 11, Gibbs discovers that a murdered New Orleans Congressman was a former NCIS agent, meaning the NCIS: New Orleans team’s first onscreen case had an unlikely personal link to the team. This is simply good business in the world of TV storytelling, where personal stakes make every story more compelling. While a murder mystery would typically be enough to shock anyone in reality, in shows where the heroes face dead bodies every day thanks to their jobs, the first case they face should ideally be one that asks more of them. This allowed viewers to see the crew from NCIS: New Orleans at their most disturbed, and made them more human as a result. Not only does this gimmick up the stakes of the show’s pilot, but it also allows NCIS: New York to avoid a common TV error in the process. To distinguish itself from NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles, NCIS: New York needs to feel different, and the easiest way to pull this off would be to go for a big, explosive pilot episode with a massive threat that concerns the entire city of New York. However, while this would grab the viewer’s attention, it would leave the spinoff in a tricky bind, since NCIS: New York would then need to outdo this major threat with every new episode to maintain the audience’s attention. Instead, NCIS franchise veteran and The Pitt co-creator R. Scott Gemmill wisely took the exact opposite approach with the pilot of NCIS: New York, making the story more personal to Hanna so that viewers could be reintroduced to LL Cool J’s character. While Hanna has been around all 14 seasons of NCIS: Los Angeles, that doesn’t mean that viewers truly know the character. As a former Navy SEAL, Hanna unapologetically plays his cards close to his chest. A crucial part of his appeal is his loyalty and serious demeanor, with Hanna often playing the deadpan straight man to the rest of the crew’s more colorful characters. All this results in a character who is clearly kind-hearted, but also a little stoic in comparison to NCIS’s tragic hero Gibbs. Why NCIS: New York's Inaugural Case Needs To Be Personal To Sam Hanna CBS Viewers have no shortage of insight into Gibbs’s formative traumas, and the same is true for the title characters of NCIS’s short-lived spinoff Tony & Ziva. In contrast, outside of knowing about his love for classic cars and his fear of clowns, viewers aren’t all that familiar with the intricacies of what makes Hanna tick. Fortunately, there is no better way to truly get to know a character in a procedural than by giving them a case that is near to their heart. Like Justified’s antihero Raylan Givens, Hanna isn’t a character who is prone to wearing his heart on his sleeve, so suddenly giving him lengthy monologues where he discusses his feelings would be a blatant betrayal of the taciturn character viewers have grown to love. As a result, the best way to bring some emotion out of Hanna is to instead throw him into a case where his existing connection to the victim forces more of a personal reaction. As evidenced when Gil Grissom’s unlikely multi-season tryst with a dominatrix fleshed out a character who had previously been little more than a standard workaholic genius, Hanna’s personal links to the pilot’s victim can make him feel like more than a straightforward tough guy. Thus, NCIS’s upcoming spinoff NCIS: New York undeniably has an excuse for bringing back this familiar gimmick. Release Date October 6, 2026 Network CBS Directors Eagle Egilsson, Adam Davidson Cast Scott Caan Nick Schaeffer Jennifer Beals Robyn Wells Jacqueline Byers Addison Ross Writers R. Scott Gemmill Creator(s) R. Scott Gemmill