‘NCIS’ Kills off Major Character in 500th Episode

It’s the end of the line for one NCIS character.

The 500^th episode of the CBS procedural aired on Tuesday night and ended with a heartbreaking death.

Warning! Major spoilers ahead for the 500^th episode of NCIS (“All Good Things”) beyond this point.

In “All Good Things,” Rocky Carroll’s NCIS Director Leon Vance broke the news to the organization that NCIS was being shut down by the Department of Defense. The episode then kept going back and forth between the few weeks following the shutdown and a month later, when Vance is called back to HQ following a break-in where he was supposedly getting arrested.

After the shutdown, the team found themselves getting sucked into another case that saw them trying to prove the innocence of a petty officer accused of murder, who turned out to be the sister of a kid Gibbs helped back in the show’s second episode. While Vance helped clear the petty officer’s name and restore NCIS, he was shot and killed by a corrupt agent who tried to blow up HQ. Vance was talking to someone in his office about the case, who was actually Young Ducky, there to guide him to the afterlife.

Carroll joined midway through Season 5 back in 2008 to replace the last NCIS Director, who was also killed. Vance has gone through quite a few near-death experiences since coming on as Director. He was previously held hostage at the end of Season 15 and was tortured, and was shot in the franchise’s 1,000^th episode in 2024. Unfortunately, despite believing all would be alright this time around, with Vance believing he survived the shooting since he was wearing a vest, he later came to the conclusion that he was not protected and succumbed to his injuries.

Carroll revealed to TVLine that he had only found out about Vance’s fate just two episodes prior to shooting it in late November/early December. “Our executive producer, Steven D. Binder, came into my trailer and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got an idea for the 500th episode. We want to do something that really sends shockwaves through the TV community and the fan base, and your character is central to the storyline,’” he recalled.

“I was like, ‘I’m interested.’ So he proceeds to tell me the storyline that the agency comes under fire, and it’s on the verge of being dismantled and folded into another agency, and… Director Vance saves the agency, and in the process of saving the agency, he loses his life,” Carroll continued. “‘It’s a great story. It’s gonna be really huge.’ And my first thought was, ‘Back up to the part again: He saves the agency and loses his life?’”

He went on to explain that he had an “out-of-body experience with that, the creative side of me, the director in me, the storyteller in me… After 23 seasons, we’ve told a lot of stories, and we’ve told a lot of them more than once.” While it seems odd, Carroll revealed that his first thought was, “That’s a great story.” The only thing that truly surprised him about the situation was how quickly he came to terms with it.

“Because I’ve been playing this character for 18 seasons. 18 seasons is a lot,” he reflected. “I feel like being a series regular on a hit show for 18 years is such an anomaly to begin with. The show is on for 23 years, with a 24th season already promised. I never thought that I would be doing this show and playing this character for 18 consecutive seasons. When I started, the show was already five years in.”

“It was towards the end of the fifth season when my character was introduced, and I literally thought when I joined the series that I was coming in probably on the tail end,” Carroll explained. “If it went seven or eight seasons, it would have been a great run. I think The Sopranos ran for six seasons. One of the most critically acclaimed shows in history was less than 10 years. We’re now past decade number two.”

“And yes, I would have loved to have been one of the characters who was there for the very last episode, when they board up the windows, and when they officially do say, ‘All right, it’s time for everybody to turn off the lights and go home.’ You’d like to be one of the last men standing,” he continued. “But after 18 seasons, I couldn’t have asked for more. If somebody had told me 18 years ago, you’re gonna do this show for nearly two decades, I would have bet the farm against that.”

“And the more I thought about it, the more I realized if there’s ever a time to write a story where your character is a central figure of it, and there’s closure… I don’t know what the end of NCIS will ultimately be, but at least I feel like my character really kind of came full circle,” Carroll shared. “With the 500th episode, Steve Binder said his objective was, ‘I want this to be a tribute and a love letter to your character.’ And I think that’s what we accomplished.”

Vance’s death will change NCIS moving forward, and not just the show itself. He was the director of NCIS, and now the organization is left without one, and there’s no telling how they will move forward and who will take his place. After all the theories as to who could be the next to be killed off on NCIS, Vance will leave a big hole, as well as Rocky Carroll. But with the show renewed for Season 24, it can be assumed that this will only be the beginning of the series exploring this unexpected and heartbreaking aftermath. New episodes of NCIS air on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on CBS, streaming the next day on Paramount+.