Few “NCIS” fans, if any, were prepared for the much-touted 500th episode of “NCIS” to turn out to be a ticket to a wake. So much mourning is still going on in the fandom over the unexpected exit of Director Leon Vance, portrayed for the last 18 seasons by Rocky Carroll,. The revelation came late in a twisty storyline that has Vance suddenly realizing that that bright light coming from beyond the doors in the NCIS office is not from construction work on the elevators… and that another deceased character, Ducky (played by Adam Campbell), has come back into the mortal realm to usher him into the afterlife.
Executive producer and showrunner Steven D. Binder has answers to some of the questions viewers might have about why the series’ overseers decided that the 500th episode would be the time for Vance to go gentle into that good night. Following is a Q&A conducted prior to the episode airing Tuesday night, as part of a wider conversation with Binder about the show hitting such rarefied air. Binder also addresses the whole history of deaths or sudden exits in the show’s 23 seasons to date, some more soothing or alarming than others. As a veteran of the writing staff since season 3, Binder even talks about killings he regrets from past years… although he didn’t become showrunner until season 16, so you can’t take him personally to task for most of those.
Viewers haven’t necessarily seen the last of Vance on the show, anyway, since “NCIS” has a history of flashbacks or spectral visitations from characters who’ve gone on to the great beyond. And as Carroll said in his exit interview with Variety, published after the episode aired Tuesday night, he will maintain his role as an occasional director on the show and, indeed, has already returned to direct an upcoming episode since shooting his final scene as a cast regular. (Read Carroll’s full interview here, and see our earlier talk with Binder about the show reaching its landmark here.)
Can you talk about the thinking that went into what is a very shocking — but, you’re surely hoping, not dissatisfying — climax to episode 500?
Yeah, that was the question. Is this a downer? You know, there was a period of time where with this show — like a lot of shows, and “Walking Dead” was big this way — nobody was safe; anyone could become a casualty. And although we were a character-based show in a lot of ways, and humor was a part of our DNA, the stakes were always real. When we lost Kate at the end of season 2, that sort of cemented something in our DNA, which is that anyone could go at any time. Over the next six, seven years, we lost a lot of people. We lost Eli David. We lost Director Shepard. We lost Mike Franks. We lost so many people, there was nobody left to lose at that point. I thought maybe we maybe lost too many people. We were kind of on a killing spree. We lost Gibbs’ ex-wife, Diane. She was a fantastic addition. But that was our DNA.
So, Director Vance’s wife gets killed. [The character of Jackie Vance, played by Paula Newsome, was shot down in crossfire during Eli David’s assassination in 2013.] And at some point we started talking about reuniting them in some way — that the loss hurt him so much that he never got over it. But we realized very quickly: Well, that’s sort of where Gibbs is at. That’s the lane Gibbs is in. But that storyline — this idea of, again, the show suffering a loss, and reuniting them — was always floating around the ether for years and years. It’s a testament to the character of Leon Vance and to Rocky himself that nobody wanted to pull that trigger, because we didn’t want to lose him. But eventually I think we knew we were going to. We knew the story was gonna happen that would end with him getting a chance to reunite with his wife.
And it became very much like “Princess Bride,” where the Dread Pirate Roberts says to Wesley, “Goodnight, Wesley, I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.” And it was becoming more and more apparent that, not knowing what the future holds, if we’re ever gonna do it, we probably ought to start considering doing it soon. And then when the 500th came around, one of the things was, “What can we do that’s epic and mythic and shocking and twisty and reminds you of how much you love this show?” Those were the questions, and it was like, “Oh, well, maybe it’s time to do that story. Maybe it’s finally time.”
“All Good Things” — Brian Dietzen, Rocky Carroll and Gary Cole in the 500th episode of “NCIS”
CBS
And the hope is, in much the same way that Kate’s death, I think, put us on the map and reinvigorated interest, we hope that this story is so powerful that it has the same effect, that it reminds people how much they love the show. It gives people a very happy ending that you couldn’t have otherwise, without Vance dying — a chance to be reunited with his loved one. And it gives us a few more years.
I think of the show as a flywheel that’s spinning, and every now and then you’ve gotta give it a really big shove and move it forward. You try to do that with just solid, good episodes every week. But it’s sometimes hard to hit the peaks unless you also hit a depth. And the depth is Leon Vance giving his life for the agency, and the peak is reminding people how much they love the show. That’s really what it came down to. It was not an easy decision, I can tell you that.
As many deaths as were happening on the show at one point, as you say, they were mostly happening with the recurring cast, not principal cast. When Kate (plaued by Sasha Alexander) was killed off at the end of season 2, there was backlash to that. You weren’t on the show yet then. But I did wonder if that ingrained something in the show that, while it might be OK to knock off some of these secondary characters, maybe we better try to keep our principal people as much as we can, because that might be a bridge too far for some fans. But you don’t want to leave people thinking that you won’t ever surprise them in that big a way, either.
Yeah, it’s a risk. We killed Ziva (Cote de Pablo) off screen, although it turns out she wasn’t dead. I guess if you don’t see the body, you never know. We’ve survived the loss of principal characters, though maybe not the death of principal characters. So the hope is that audiences can survive the hit. And in a lot of ways, when Gibbs left, one of the selling points is that everyone loves Gibbs. Everybody knows Gibbs is in an incredible amount of pain, and when you see him in Alaska, he’s not in pain. He’s happy. So we sort of leverage people’s love against them. That same love that says “I don’t want you to go” is the same love that says, “But you should stay on that lake in Alaska.” And that’s sort of the hope with Vance: However much you love him, when you see him seeing his wife and he’s going into the light, you think, “Well, I’m gonna be sad for me, but I’m very happy for you.” And I hope that carries the day.
And I will also add, we’ve had people die and they show up in flashbacks. Diane Sterling (played by Melinda McGraw) showed up potentially as a ghost in Gibbs’ mind in the season finale of season 16. So this doesn’t mean that he’s gone. He’s just dead.
NCIS – “All Good Things” – Pictured: Rocky Carroll as Director Leon Vance and Adam Campbell as Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard.
CBS
I was wondering if you ever regretted any of the deaths. Fans of some of these characters may have their own grievances. But when Mike Franks (played by Muse Watson) died, in particular, there was a big part of the fandom that was like, “Oh, that’s too much.” He was arguably as well-loved as the principal characters.
It deprived us… You know, I think back to when Freddie Mercury died, and I thought, “What songs aren’t we going to ever hear now?” And there’s no upside to that one. Mike Franks, when he died, it was an extremely powerful episode. It really gave the audience, again, a taste of the contours of where we really go. But it deprived us of a lot of really good episodes.
And when Gibbs’s ex-wife, Diane Sterling, was killed, she was absolutely fantastic. We did these episodes with her and Joe Spano playing Special Agent Tobias Fornell and Gibbs; the three of them were just gold. So her death also deprived us of another eight fantastic episodes. That was a real bummer. So, I brought Mike Franks back in a flashback episode. I brought her back in a flashback episode, so we got a little more out of them. But I regret those.
I was actually tasked with introducing another ex-wife of Gibbs, and I was told that we’re gonna meet this ex-wife and she’s gonna die. And while I was off working on some stuff, the writing staff decided that it would be much better if we killed the wife that we already knew better, because it would hurt more. And I showed up and I was like, “What? No, we can’t kill this character!” But, you know, we ended up casting as that third ex-wife Jeri Ryan, who was also fantastic [in the 2015 episode “Check”]. And I don’t know that we saw her again, which is a bummer, because she was great. But you know, it is what it is.
I was overruled [on Diane’s death]. And I regret that. But I stayed on the show. The real reason I stayed on the show is so I could become the showrunner and get even with them and kill their favorite characters.
* * *
Following are Binder’s non-spoiler comments on Vance and Rocky Carroll, as included in his 500th-episode Q&A published Tuesday.
When you introduced Gary Cole’s character as an antagonist to Gibbs and possible bad guy, before he turned out to be virtuous, there was a little bit of precedent there with Rocky Carroll’s character, where Vance was ambiguous for a while.
Yeah, and people did not like him. For a long while, I’d meet people and they were like, “I don’t like that director guy,” because he was kind of a dick. But he also was not in the show that much at the beginning. Every show’s got their characters that are sort of the odd man out or the antagonistic energies, and that’s who Rocky played. But he’s such a great guy, it was hard to keep him in that box for very long.
Rocky Carroll poses during a celebration of the NCIS 500th Episode during taping on December 2, 2025 in Valencia, California.
CBS
So it not necessarily the plan that Director Vance would become, for lack of a better term, as relatively cuddly as as he eventually did?
You know, a lot of these characters, we see what we have, and they evolve in the way that it plays to their strengths. And he’s the boss and he’s in charge, but there’s always been a warmth to Rocky himself, and that started to shine through to the character. I’ll tell you the original plan was, we did the first couple seasons of the show, and we had a director, Tom Morrow, who was not in the show that much. And then we had Lauren Holly in for a little while, but not every episode, I don’t think. And it was difficult to find things for the director to do. The show really wasn’t built that way. Then she eventually left and we were going to replace that character with a new director, but Rocky was not supposed to be in that many episodes. He was so good that every year he was in another episode [more than the last]. I don’t remember the [initial] number, but let’s say 10, and then it’s 11, 12 and 13, and then 10 years later, he’s in almost all the episodes. But the original plan was to not use him all that much at all, and he just was such a fantastic addition and such a great actor. And so when you had him in a scene and you knew he was gonna show up, have a take, know it, do it cold, do it awesome, and be a joy to work with, yeah, you tend to get written in more, when you’re like that. Which is not to say that everyone else isn’t great too. But he’s top of the heap.
NCIS 23-504 – “All Good Things” –
Pictured: Rocky Carroll as Director Leon Vance and Adam Campbell as Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard.
CBS
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