Rocky Carroll Confirms His Personal Relationship With Mark Harmon Impacted Their NCIS Storylines

There’s been rumors for a while now about what working on the NCIS set was like, and plenty of them involved Mark Harmon. But now that he and his character Gibbs have left the show — possibly never to return — people have grown curious about what Harmon’s relationship with his co-stars was really like. Let’s take a look at what Rocky Carroll had to say about him.

Heartbreak

Harmon’s leaving NCIS shook up the show in a way it never had been ever before. Fans were absolutely devastated at the news. After Gibbs’ final episode, they took to Twitter and shared their heartbreak with the writers and producers. One wrote, “NCIS will never be the same without Gibbs.”

Never again

Some others, however, took it further, and declared on social media that they’d simply never watch the show again. One displeased person tweeted, “I’ve seen every single episode. I’ve seen people come and go, from Kate, Ziva, Tony, Abby and even Bishop, but NCIS is Gibbs. He goes, I go.”

Retirement

But fans lucked out in one respect: despite NCIS being a very death-heavy show, Gibbs didn’t die. Instead, he simply retired. In the season 19 episode, titled “Great Wide Open,” he solved an important case in Alaska and decided to stay there, saying he had found a “sense of peace.”

Watchdog

Gibbs’ retirement had actually been in motion for a while, if you look back over the show. In the March 2021 episode “Watchdog,” Gibbs was suspended by Carroll’s character Director Vance after he killed the leader of a dogfighting ring. Plenty of viewers suspected that was the beginning of the end.