‘NCIS’ Showrunner Offers Update on Michael Weatherly’s Return for Season 20

Now that Bull has ended at CBS, many NCIS fans are wondering if actor Michael Weatherly could return for the show’s upcoming 20th season. Well, we now have our answer, kind of, as TV Line spoke with NCIS showrunner Steven D. Binder and posed that exact question. “Wouldn’t that be great?” Binder replied, then going on to express uncertainty over the possibility.

“When [Michael] left NCIS, he said to me, ‘I am never going to do network television again,’” Binder revealed. “He had just had some kids, and the hours are so long… but then this Bull thing landed in his lap, and again he was working like a fiend. So I suspect – forgetting Tony DiNozzo for a minute – that Michael Weatherly is on vacation. I’ve known him for a while and I think he needs to chillax and go someplace tropical. I haven’t spoken to him about that but we’ve talked over the years, and that’s my guess.” As Binder noted, Weatherly played NCIS Special Agent Anthony “Tony” DiNozzo Jr. for the first 13 seasons of the hit crime procedural.

CBS previously revealed NCIS Season 20 will premiere on Monday, Sept. 19, at 9 pm ET. It will be preceded by the season premieres of The Neighborhood at 8 pm and Bob Hearts Abishola at 8:30 pm. Following the debut of the new season of NCIS will be the second season premiere of NCIS: Hawai’i at 10 pm.

NCIS Season 19 ended back in May, and during the final episode, fans got to see two fan-favorite characters become a couple after months of romantic tension. In the season finale, Jimmy Palmer and Jessica Knight — played by Brian Dietzen and Katrina Law, respectively — had their very first on-screen kiss. The big moment had been building over the season, as the pair were seen being very flirty throughout the seasons. Ahead of the finale, Dietzen spoke about the romantic tension between his and Law’s characters. 

“When you have a wonderful time on something that is a ‘date-not-a-date,’ and then you both choose not to talk about it to one another that inevitably will bring up some sort of, ‘Hey, why are we not talking about this, we had a really good time?’” Dietzen told Parade.com in an exclusive interview. “I think the next natural progression of that is should we talk about ‘Is there something there?’ I was happy that they wrote this episode to address that and say maybe there is something there.”