Emily Wickersham Joins ‘NCIS: Origins’ Season 3 In Return To Her Original Role

Mark Harmon’s character, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, will have another blast-from-the-past connection visiting NCIS: Origins this season.

Emily Wickersham will guest star as her original NCIS character, Eleanor “Ellie” Bishop, in multiple episodes of Season 3. Her first appearance will be in the Tuesday, Oct. 27 episode titled “Shimmy Shimmy Ya.”

Wickersham starred as Bishop on the mothership series for eight seasons before exiting in 2021. She last appeared on NCIS for a guest appearance in March. This will be the character’s first time appearing in the prequel series.

In the episode on the 1993 timeline, the team intervenes when a general’s rebellious teen son is targeted by a dangerous former gang member. In the present, Gibbs (Harmon) returns to a place full of memories and discovers he’s not alone. Bishop is enlisted by new director Tony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly) to help Gibbs on his quest to track down the unknown assailants who tried to kill him.

She is the second OG cast member to reunite with adult Gibbs in Season 3, following Weatherly’s upcoming appearance in Episode 3, “Return of the Mack,” which airs tonight.

I spoke to showrunner and executive producer David J. North last week, who teased what to expect from the Gibs/DiNozzo reunion: “[In the Oct. 13 episode] Woody (Bobby Moynihan) helped Gibbs reconstruct the fingerprint, only to find that the guy is in the system but his profile’s buried in red tape. Gibbs knows he’ll need help from someone with serious access and, luckily, DiNozzo, as the newly minted Director of NCIS, is just the man for the job. And yes, it’s a pivotal part of Gibbs’ season-long arc in 2026.”

Harmon will play adult Gibbs across the rest of the show’s third season as part of a special present-day timeline.