'NCIS' Viewers Blown Away by Christopher Lloyd's Moving Guest-Starring Role

The Season 17 finale of NCIS featured a thrilling story about Joe Smith (played by guest star Christopher Lloyd), a 95-year-old who claimed to have served on the USS Arizona on Dec. 7, 1941, the date of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Smith wished to be interned there upon his death. However, the issue was that there were no records that indicated that he served on the battleship and, as a result, Gibbs and the team needed to figure out whether Smith was telling the truth. Ultimately, the team was able to discover that Smith did indeed serve on the USS Arizona and, following his death at the end of the episode, was able to be interned at Pearl Harbor. Fans were particularly enthralled by this story because of the appearance of the enigmatic Lloyd, and they said as much on social media.

"I think all of us at the show wanted to write a Pearl Harbor episode over the years. For me personally, it was daunting because I knew all the research I would have to do, and I knew I'd want to get it exactly right," co-executive producer Gina Monreal, who wrote the episode, told TVLine in advance of the finale. She went on to note that she got an "indirect nudge" from her grandfather-in-law, a World War II vet who was also reluctant to talk about his experiences, just like Lloyd's character. "He didn't talk about the war until right before his death, but seeing the importance of his story and what it meant to him — and then going through and reading as many accounts as I could find, watching as many videos I could find, seeing how these men told these stories — was so inspiring, I realized it was a story that had to be told."

It was definitely a moving story and fans, in turn, responded to it accordingly by discussing the episode on social media. In particular, many fans specifically took time to mention Lloyd's guest-starring role and the impact that he was able to create in NCIS' moving season finale.