Warning: SPOILERS for the NCIS episode “Humbug” are ahead!
This year’s Christmas episode of NCIS just finished airing on the 2024 TV schedule, with “Humbug” following along with the team not as they were investigating a standard murder case, but rather trying to uncover the truth behind an ambush that hit a squad of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan in December 2010. But as Alden Parker, Timothy McGee, Nick Torres, Jessica Knight, Jimmy Palmer and Kasie Hines were looking into this mystery, they were being overseen by Seamus Dever’s Gabriel LaRoche, the new NCIS Deputy Director. It was an intrusive return, to be sure, and NCIS showrunner Steven D. Binder told CinemaBlend what’s coming up next for the potentially-shady character.
When LaRoche was introduced in Season 22’s second episode, I’d initially assumed he was being set up as the new NCIS big bad, especially since Katrina Law told me how the character “kicked McGee's Spidey senses off really hard.” But “Humbug” seemed to paint LaRoche in more shades of grey, so when I had the opportunity to speak with Binder ahead of the episode’s premiere, I asked Binder if it was fair to call LaRoche an antagonist, or if it was more complicated than that. He answered:
It's more complicated than that. He certainly is presenting as an antagonist, and as McGee digs in, he's going to even seem shadier than we thought. But although we can be a simple show at times, there's a complexity in that simpleness. I would say it's a good bet that not everything is as it seems with this guy.
The reason Gabriel LaRoche hadn’t been seen since the NCIS Season 22 premiere was because he’d been visiting every NCIS office around the world, but McGee’s suspicions about the man never diminished during his time away. Upon LaRoche’s return to Washington D.C. in “Humbug”, Director Leon Vance assigned him to supervise the team looking into Lieutenant Merritt Hastings, who was being accused in a soon-to-be-published tell-all book of negligence during the 2010 attack. Long story short, Hastings was cleared of any wrongdoing, so the veterans medical bill he was advocating for that’s up for a vote next year would not be adversely affected.
As far as LaRoche goes, though, it was clear his methods did not jive with the way our main characters usually do things, and they didn’t like him hovering around them. And yet, towards the end of the episode, LaRoche took the blame for them after they continued to investigate the case even after it was handed off to JAG. It was a surprising, yet welcome gesture, but then, during a televised press conference, he said that, “Bold, decisive leadership will define the next chapter of NCIS.” So that was more than enough for me to wonder what’s next for this enigmatic character, and here’s what Steve D. Binder said about the events about this episode and what’s coming up:
So he's gonna be getting up in everybody's business, for sure. And the question is, what are the motives? And that's what McGee is suspicious about. The next biggest chapter is… in the Christmas episode that's gonna be coming up, Laroche is gonna be working directly with the team and we're gonna get a sense of his MO. And then coming out of that, McGee is gonna be even more suspicious of LaRoche. And when he reappears again, it will be in a situation where there's some jeopardy. The simplest version is McGee wants nothing more than to take this guy out and circumstances might require him to do it.
With only two appearances logged in, it’s hard to get a read on Gabriel LaRoche, but going off what Binder told me, we evidently shouldn’t view him as a straightforward bad guy. That’s not to say LaRoche is entirely a good guy either, as McGee believes he’s making moves for himself, and his self-interest may end up posing problems for the team. Perhaps that’s what leads McGee to start planning to “take this guy out,” though what exactly that would entail is a mystery.
We’ll start getting more answers once NCIS resumes its 22nd season January 27 on the 2025 TV schedule. In the meantime, revisit past NCIS episodes, or any of the other shows in the procedural franchise, by streaming them with a Paramount+ subscription.
