Spoiler alert: This story includes plot details from the April 28 “NCIS: Origins” season finale.
The “NCIS: Origins” love story between young Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Austin Stowell) and Cecilia “Lala” Dominguez (Mariel Molino) might be tragically over, even before the first kiss.
The “NCIS” prequel series has flirted with the budding romance between Dominguez and circa-1991 NIS agent Gibbs, who is still reeling over his wife and daughter’s murder.
In the April 28 Season 1 finale (now streaming on Paramount+), Gibbs’ sniper killing of the drug lord Pedro Hernandez, to avenge his family’s death, reemerges with catastrophic consequences for Dominguez and Gibbs. There are twists, “NCIS” canon fodder, a tantalizing near-kiss, heartbreak and even more questions to be answered in Season 2 next fall.
“We leave this as a cliffhanger for everyone,” says executive producer Gina Lucita Monreal, who joins fellow exec producer David J. North in breaking down the Season 1 finale.
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Dominguez and Gibbs stop their first ‘Origins’ kiss
Mark Harmon narrates the series as retired Gibbs, in the role the “NCIS” star played for nearly two decades. Harmon, also an executive producer, set the tone with his fireside monologue in the “Origins” premiere: “This is a story I don’t tell. This is the story of her.”
That pronoun signifies Dominguez, as the finale (titled “Cecilia,” Lala’s full first name) makes abundantly clear.
The season-long will-they-won’t-they chemistry between Dominguez and Gibbs explodes after the out-of-the-blue investigation into Hernandez’s death brought by Dominguez’s good friend, military police investigator Lara Macy (Claire Berger).
Rather than pull Dominguez and mentor Mike Franks (Kyle Schmid) into a planned coverup, Gibbs ends the investigation by taking the fall. He digs up the buried rifle he used to shoot Hernandez and hands it over to Macy.
Relieved by resolution, Gibbs finds Dominguez in the swimming pool she often trespasses in at night, sheds most of his clothes and dives in. The duo has the steamiest water clinch that doesn’t end in a kiss in TV history. The lip lock stops short, centimeters away.
“We talked a lot about whether we should let that kiss happen or not. We wanted to get them to the point where they both wanted it to happen. We brought them to the edge,” Monreal says. “But Gibbs couldn’t let that happen, because that kiss would have been tainted with the enormous news he had to tell her. He knew that would change everything.”
When Gibbs tells Dominguez that he has turned over his rifle to Macy to take the fall, it definitely ends the love vibe. She leaves the pool disgusted, saying, “I’m done.” No first kiss.
Dominguez fills in ‘NCIS’ mystery: Why Macy dropped Gibbs’ case
But she’s not done. Unbeknownst to Gibbs, Dominguez falsely implicates herself in Hernandez’s killing to convince her friend, Macy, to drop the case. “She put it all on the line for Gibbs,” North says.
Dominguez’s move fills in “NCIS” series lore. Macy appears in Season 6 of “NCIS” (played by Louise Lombard), working with the Office of Special Projects, and reveals that she had dropped the Hernandez case against Gibbs. But Gibbs never knew why, which viewers discover in “Origins”: Dominguez bailed him out.
Gibbs meets his future wife, Diane
Packing up his family photos in his house, future love steps in. Gibbs meets his red-headed real estate agent, Diane (Kathleen Kenny). On “NCIS,” Gibbs’ second wife (there were four, with three divorces and one death) was red-haired Diane Sterling (Melinda McGraw).
“Gina and I knew, from our first conversation, we wanted to tell the love story of Gibbs and this character Lala,” North says. “We sat there on the phone, and were like, ‘He’s got to get married three other times.’ So here we are, sticking to canon.”
Does Lala die on ‘NCIS: Origins’?
Tragedy plays a hand as Dominguez speeds over to Gibbs’ house to tell him about her success with Macy. With Simon and Garfunkel’s “Cecilia” playing on the stereo, she flips her Jeep trying to avoid a young girl who runs into the street. The final moments show a motionless Dominguez, blood coming from her nose, restrained by her seat belt in the overturned car.
Harmon’s somber voiceover says Dominguez was “coming to tell me she had saved me. I would only find out later what she did for me. But that’s not what made me love her. I loved her all along. I still do.”
Whether Dominguez survives is the biggest finale cliffhanger.
“We’ll have to wait until Season 2 to find the fate of Lala,” says North. “We’ve gone into her story and why it’s the story of Lala. That story will continue to be told. But she’s already saved Gibbs. The Gibbs we come to know on ‘NCIS’ wouldn’t have ever existed without Lala.”
