From 2013-2021, Emily Wickersham starred on NCIS as Ellie Bishop, a role she landed after testing on two of the show’s main sets. She departed the series in the Season 18 finale, though since Bishop was still alive, at least the door is open for her to potentially return to the popular CBS procedural someday. Whether that will actually happen is hard to say, but I’m certainly hoping so again now that Wickersham had a fun reunion with someone else from NCIS.
During NCIS Seasons 14 through 18, Wickersham got to work with David J. North, who came back to the show after being a producer during Seasons 6 and 7. This time, North started out as a consulting producer, and was a co-executive producer by the time the actress left. These days, he’s serving as NCIS: Origins’ co-showrunner alongside Gina Lucita Monreal, but he just got to hang out Wickersham once again, as he shared on his Instagram Stories:
Since NCIS: Origins is a prequel showing Leroy Jethro Gibbs starting out as an NIS agent, long before he met Ellie Bishop, obviously we can rule out Emily Wickersham making a guest appearance on that show. This was just her stopping by David J. North’s workspace to hang out with an old colleague and sit in on the edit of Origins Season 2’s fifth episode, as revealed in another picture. A third picture North posted showed him and Wickersham on the couch together looking at the laptop, and then the actress posted this on her own Instagram Stories:
I’m glad Emily Wickersham enjoyed reuniting with David J. North and walked away with a “cool” hat. Again though, this just makes me want to see Ellie Bishop return to NCIS even more. Granted, eight seasons is a long run to play a character on a TV show, and she had a “wonderful and weird” period adjusting to not working on NCIS anymore, though her pregnancy factored into that, too. So I wouldn’t expect Wickersham to ever become a series regular again, but that doesn’t mean a guest appearance can’t be in the cards.
When we last saw Ellie Bishop in “Rule 91,” she’d resigned from NCIS and torpedoed her reputation for an undercover operation being run by Odette Malone, who used to be Ziva David’s contact. Ideally that mission is finally over and would allow Bishop to visit her former colleagues at NCIS, though not rejoin the agency. At the very least, there’s unfinished business between her and Wilmder Valderrama’s Nick Torres, because although they shared a kiss right before she left, they never took the full leap into romance with each other.
I’ll just keep my fingers crossed there comes a day when this can happen, and be happy that Emily Wickersham and David J. North crossed paths again. New episodes of NCIS air Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on CBS and become available to stream with a Paramount+ subscription the next day. NCIS: Origins airs the same night on the 2025 TV schedule at 9 p.m. ET.