Did ‘NCIS: Origins’ Just Kill Off a Character?

Spoilers ahead for the Season 1 finale of CBS’ NCIS: Origins.

NCIS: Origins fans were in for a shock during the Season 1 finale of the CBS procedural.

Just as it looked like the budding romance between Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Austin Stowell) and Cecilia “Lala” Dominguez (Mariel Molino) was coming to a head, Lala flips her car in the last moments of the episode — and the final shot shows her motionless and bleeding out in the overturned car.

“I loved her all along. I still do,” Gibbs narrates over the shot of Lala’s seemingly lifeless body. “This is a story I don’t tell. I can’t find the words. But it never stops running through my head — the story of her.”

But is Lala actually dead? NCIS: Origins co-showrunners Gina Lucita Monreal and David J. North played coy while discussing the finale with TV Line.

“I won’t officially say that Lala is dead, but certainly we went into this saying that we needed to give ourselves the wiggle room to take these big swings and do what we felt was right,” North told the outlet.

Monreal said the what-ifs that come with Lala’s crash on her way to see Gibbs “is the reason why we went with an accident instead of something happening to her in the line of duty, because ultimately it’s more relatable, it’s universal.”

She continued, “And though we don’t know the fate of Lala yet, no matter what happens with her, there are going to be shock waves throughout the people in her life, just as there would be in our own.”

North added to Screen Rant, “As far as Lala’s character, I definitely know that she’s going to continue to be a presence in Gibbs’ life just solely from what’s already just happened. And we just heard Mark Harmon, the older Gibbs say, ‘I loved her. I still do.’ So she’ll remain a presence regardless of what her fate was that night.”