NCIS Delivered Its Biggest Shakeup To The LaRoche Storyline Yet, And It Came With Some Surprising Gibbs Throwbacks For McGee

Warning: SPOILERS for the NCIS episode “Irreconcilable Differences” are ahead!

NCIS Season 22 ended its premiere back in October with the set-up for its first multi-episode storyline: the mystery of Gabriel LaRoche. Timothy McGee has been suspicious of the new NCIS Deputy Director, and the last few weeks have seen him become even more determined to expose LaRoche as a traitor. But now the latest NCIS episode to hit the 2025 TV schedule has delivered its biggest shakeup to the LaRcohe storyline. As if that wasn’t a big enough deal on its own, these new revelations also came with McGee experiencing some wild throwbacks to his former boss, Leroy Jethro Gibbs.

What We Learned About Gabriel LaRoche In This NCIS Episode

The events of “Killer Instinct” confirmed McGee’s suspicions that LaRoche was shady, and last week’s episode, “After the Storm,” ended with Director Leon Vance allowing McGee to examine an unpublished DOJ IG report to see it contained any information that would strengthen his case. Unfortunately, that didn’t pan out, as McGee told Nick Torres and Jessica Knight early into “Irreconcilable Differences.”

With McGee having gone several days without sleeping (more on that later), Alden Parker decided to send him home. But before McGee could grab lunch to bring back to his wife and kids, he noticed LaRoche in the parking lot driving off somewhere without his security detail. So McGee followed him to various stops, and the journey ended at an abandoned power plant, where he witnessed LaRoche shoot a man.

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However, when McGee attempted to chase after LaRoche, he was hit by a car, and by the time everyone else had arrived, the body of the man LaRoche shot was nowhere to be found and there was no trace of physical evidence. So now the idea had been planted that McGee imagined all this or even made it up, and things only got worse when Inspector General Regina Ward arrived investigate an official complaint filed against our intrepid agent for “professional misconduct, harassment and abuse of power.” Three guesses who filed it, and the first two don’t count.

But eventually, things started to turn up McGee. It turned out LaRoche was connected to the heist of a party supplies truck involving high-tech guns belonging to the US Navy capable of killing remote signals. Millions of dollars were stolen from the truck, which was actually transportation for the Nexus Cartel, and McGee inferred that LaRoche, whom he believes has ties to the cartel, needed the money to flee the country. The body of the man LaRoche shot was also ultimately found, and LaRoche was caught on camera loading evidence from NCIS into a van to take it to an unknown location.

Ok, there’s no question Gabriel LaRoche is a villain now, right? Well… here’s the thing, McGee skipped out on being interrogated more by Regina Ward and followed LaRoche to his meet with one of the other party truck thieves. Initially McGee and LaRoche had their guns pointed at each other, but when the other guy pulled out his own gun to kill McGee, LaRoche killed him instead. McGee was shot in the shoulder during the commotion, and when the team arrived to back him up and discovered an SD card on the recently deceased, LaRoche shot down the accusation that this has all been about money, adding, “It’s time you know the truth.”

How Gibbs Impacted McGee In This NCIS Episode

Tabling the LaRocheness of it all for just a moment, I need to talk about how Leroy Jethro Gibbs, who hasn’t been seen on NCIS since early Season 19, factored into this episode. At the start of “Irreconcilable Differences,” a figure was seen walking down into a very familiar basement wearing a USMC hoodie and drinking some bourbon out of a jar that’d previously held metal screws. Hang on, did Mark Harmon finally make his long-awaited return to NCIS?

I wish, but no, the figure was Timothy McGee, who was hanging out in his boss’ old digs, which included a postcard from Alaska (where Gibbs still is as of NCIS: Origins’ series premiere) and a fully-constructed boat with the name Tim on it. Alas, once Gabriel LaRoche entered the basement and shot McGee, we learned this was a dream Sean Murray’s character was having at his desk in his exhausted state. Later on in the episode, McGee also imagined he was entering Gibbs’ pickup truck rather than his own car.

So are these dreams/hallucinations meant to tease that Mark Harmon will reprise Gibbs soon? That might be a stretch, though it would be nice if the Season 22 finale delved deeper into this subject beyond Knight’s amateur psychoanalysis. Torres also mentioned he’s had his own Gibbs basement dream, which saw Harmon’s character giving a virgin Piña Colada and told him not to slouch.

As for LaRoche, it looks like the NCIS Season 22 finale will finally give all the answers to the questions we’ve been asking about him. Or maybe this will be one of those NCIS plotlines that stretches into the beginning of the next season. Tune in next week to find out!