‘NCIS’ References Canceled Spinoffs in Subtle Way

While the NCIS franchise is still going strong with the Mothership, NCIS: Origins, and NCIS: Sydney, the past lives on. In a recent episode of the long-running CBS procedural, there’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it nod to canceled spinoffs NCIS: Los Angeles, NCIS: New Orleans, and NCIS: Hawai’i.

Per TVLine, in the Feb. 24 episode, “Bad Blood,” Sean Murray’s McGee was trying to help with his twins’ annual school winter fundraiser with three flavors of coffee. He managed to wrangle in Diona Reasonover’s Kasie, who had basically put out a Bat signal across all of the NCIS organization. At one point in the episode, Kasie has a detailed whiteboard in her lab of specific NCIS offices, who is getting coffee, and how much of what flavor, and it includes some very familiar names and updates.

Scott Bakula’s Dwayne Pride from NCIS: NOLA, Daniela Ruah’s Kensi Blye and Chris O’Donnell’s G. Callen from NCIS: LA, and Vanessa Lachey and Jason Antoon’s Jane Tennant and Ernie Malik from NCIS: Hawai’i all signed up to receive some coffee. Additionally, this also proves that they are still working at their respective offices. Not only that, but the episode also name dropped the Sydney offices on more than one occasion, including having Olivia Swann’s Mackey buying some coffee.

While it was subtle and most probably even missed it during a first glance, it was a nice way to give fans a little update on some missed fan-favorite characters. Whether any of them or any other characters will ever actually pop up again on NCIS remains to be seen, but at least there could always be more subtle name drops in the future. Especially with NCIS renewed for yet another season.

NCIS: New Orleans was the first NCIS spinoff to get the boot, coming to an end after seven seasons in 2021. NCIS: Los Angeles, the first NCIS spinoff, was the second to end in 2023 after 14 seasons, followed by NCIS: Hawai’i last year. As for current spinoffs, NCIS: Sydney, in its second season, and prequel NCIS: Origins, in its first, were both renewed for new seasons. Paramount+’s NCIS: Tony & Ziva is due out later this year, with Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo returning to reprise their titular fan-favorite roles.

New episodes of NCIS air on Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on CBS.