There’s something afoot in the Naval Criminal Investigative Service’s leadership hierarchy in NCIS Season 22, which is now in the back half of its run on the 2025 TV schedule. At the end of the latest season’s premiere, Seamus Dever’s Gabriel LaRoche was tapped to be the new Deputy Director of NCIS. The problem is this guy is giving off all kind of sketchy vibes, with Katrina Law telling CinemaBlend that LaRoche has “kicked McGee’s Spider senses off real hard.” Although showrunner Steven D. Binder later told us that "not everything is as it seems with this guy,” I remain suspicious of the man, and now Rocky Carroll has opened up about how NCIS Director Leon Vance views the new character.
After Carroll discussed his favorite part about directing the latest NCIS episode, “Baker’s Man” (which can now be streamed with a Paramount+ subscription), I asked for the actor’s thoughts in my recent interview with him on where Vance currently stands with LaRoche and what he could tell me about the current dynamic between the two. He answered:
Well I think in true NCIS fashion, I think everybody's wheels are turning with regard to LaRoche, and I think that the only way that Vance is going to get to the bottom of exactly who he is and what his motives ultimately are is that he's got to play along to some degree. So I think there's sort of a waiting game on everybody's part to see if LaRoche is more than he says he is, if he's a wolf in sheep's clothing. Will he reveal himself? Is there more to this than meets the eye?
Vance signed off on bringing LaRoche into NCIS, so clearly he saw something in him valuable in him. However, going off of Rocky Carroll’s response, it also sounds like Vance recognizes that something’s amiss with LaRoche, and so he’ll need to keep up appearances with the new hire to figure out what’s going on. Since McGee and the rest of the team haven’t outright discussed their concerns on this matter with Vance, I find it interesting that he’s forming the same kind of opinions on his own.
Rocky Carroll also pointed out an amusing irony with Leon Vance keeping a close eye on Gabriel LaRoche, because when Vance was introduced back in NCIS Season 5, there was also suspicion surrounding him. As the actor put it:
It was kind of similar to when the Vance character was first introduced. NCIS audiences were like, ‘Is this guy a mole? Is he actually a bad guy cleverly disguised as a good guy?’ So there's that vetting process that not only happens between the characters, I think the audiences as well now… because the show's been around so long. We have such a history, I think whenever we introduce a new character, your first thought is, ’Ok, what's the real story with this guy?’ Which I love.
I don’t doubt that LaRoche will ultimately be presented in a more three-dimensional light, but it would also nice to get clarification soon about if we can classify him as an antagonist or not. McGee suspected LaRoche was responsible for blowing Torres’ cover in “Empty Nest,” but that still has yet to be proven. So far Seamus Dever has only appeared in two NCIS episodes, but I have to imagine we’ll be seeing much more of him in the coming months.
As NCIS Season 22 moves along Mondays at 9 pm ET on CBS, I look forward to seeing how Vance and the other main characters will react once the truth about LaRoche is revealed. That, of course, will be mixed in with Alden Parker’s Lily mystery continuing to be explored, as well as the “flight plan” for the Kanas City mob.
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