‘NCIS’: Sean Murray Reveals If McGee Is Leaving the Show After Shooting

Following the NCIS Season 18 premiere and its crazy plot twist — which saw Gibbs (Mark Harmon) shoot his close friend and fellow agent McGee (Sean Murray) — fans began to wonder what would happen to McGee and if they would have to say goodbye to the famous character. Murray revealed to TV Insider fans don’t have to worry about his character this season. “We’ll see the aftermath of that shooting,” Murray said, assuring fans “[McGee] doesn’t die.”

The shooting is essentially a ploy to save McGee’s life, as the second episode “Head of the Snake” exposed. The team jumps into Gibbs and Fornell’s (Joe Spano) operation to catch Merriweather when suddenly things take a turn for the worse. Bishop (Emily Wickersham) winds up kidnapped, and because he thinks he has to stop the plane before it takes off, McGee (disguised as Fornell) rushes to the plane on the runway.

Because the two are such good friends, the upcoming episodes should deal with the fall out of their work and personal relationship, Murray shares. “A lot of it is not necessarily just physical but emotional,” he continued. “Just wrestling with and coming to terms with — even in the situation of it being done to save your life — the fact that somebody so close to you, that’s like a father figure to you, more so than even your real father was, shoots you.”

“It’s not like McGee just throws on a Band-Aid and says, ‘We’re good, Boss,’” he continued. “We very realistically explore some of the emotions and thoughts of the aftermath of what that really would be in dealing with that. Just the shock of what it is and the reality of, how do we face this and move past this?”

McGee officially joined Gibb’s team in Season 2 after working with them throughout Season 1. “The Gibbs and McGee relationship is a long and complicated one, and obviously is much more complicated by [these] events,” Murray says. “We definitely get into how that changes the relationship between them and working through that and the evolution [of that relationship] over the years.”

After seven seasons, CBS recently decided to cancel another show within the NCIS universe: NCIS: New Orleans. There’s still no word yet on what this could mean for the other shows NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles. However, the rumor around Hollywood says that the network could ax the flagship series if its main star Gibbs (main star) leaves the show. Gibbs was one of the original characters on the show. He eventually went on to earn producer credits on the NCIS: Nola.

The network also revealed the NCIS team will be moving to Hawaii very soon. CBS has greenlit an NCIS spinoff series set in the Aloha state. Nola showrunner Chris Silber will serve as showrunner and executive producer on the new show along with Jan Nash and Matt Bosack.