What happened to Vance on NCIS? Rocky Carroll's already teasing a way back
Leon Vance spent his last episode explaining his own death to a man who had already died, which tells you most of what you need to know about how NCIS handles goodbyes.
Rocky Carroll played Vance for 18 years. He first turned up in season 5, in an episode called "Internal Affairs," became Director of NCIS in season 6 and held the job longer than anyone in the show's history. He's not in season 24, which premiered on CBS on October 6 with a new director in his office.
How Vance died
It happened in "All Good Things," the 500th episode, which aired March 24 and was written by showrunner Steven D. Binder. The agency was on the verge of being shut down and folded into another one, and Vance worked out who was sabotaging it from inside.
- The case — a smuggling ring, and a bomb set to destroy the evidence. Vance defused it.
- The shot — an agent who had been working the case alongside McGee and Knight turned out to be part of the ring, and shot him.
- The conversation — Vance spends the episode walking a mysterious listener through the timeline, slowly realizing he's already dead. The listener is Ducky, the team's late medical examiner, played by Adam Campbell from NCIS: Origins.
- The reunion — he accepts it, and goes on to his late wife, Jackie.
The team closed the case without him, and NCIS survived. Later in the season, a corrupt Army CID director named Wayne Rogers was revealed to have been complicit in Vance's murder.
Why Rocky Carroll left
It wasn't his idea. Binder walked him through the back half of the season, and Carroll has described having to ask him to repeat the ending.
"Back up to the part where you say in saving the agency, he loses his life," Carroll recalled telling Binder, speaking to TV Insider.
He came around to it, mostly because of the math. Eighteen years on one network drama is a career most actors never get, and he told Variety that keeping one character that long was "the equivalent of living to be 105."
The way back
Carroll has been hinting at a return almost since the episode aired, and his argument rests on how NCIS already treats its dead. He made it to The Hollywood Reporter shortly after the 500th aired.
"We have more characters who have been killed off who come back as apparitions and spirits," Carroll said.
In the same interview, he said he wouldn't be surprised if Vance turned out "more prevalent dead than he was when he was alive." The show even has a name for it, he said, "ghost stars." To TV Insider, he put it in one sentence: "I don't think you've seen the last of Director Vance."
The show has kept every one of those doors open:
- Flashbacks — Vance was back in the season 23 finale, "Sons and Daughters," on May 12, in scenes with his daughter Kayla set before his death.
- The voice in someone's head — Binder told TVLine they'd planned to keep seeing Vance "either in flashbacks, or in people's heads like Jiminy Cricket," and left the second option open for later seasons.
- Behind the camera — Carroll told THR he'd been asked to come back and direct "even though my character is dead." He directed a season 23 episode after Vance's death, too.
None of those requires bringing Vance back to life, which is the one thing nobody is promising. NCIS has never needed that to keep a character around.
The episode that killed Vance was built around a dead man listening to him. The show doesn't need a new trick to bring him back. It already used that trick to kill him.
Who's in his office now
Not the man who wanted it. Gary Cole's LaRoche spent the season 23 finale making plans to take the job, and the season 24 premiere gave it to him briefly before the Secretary of the Navy decided he'd picked the wrong person. The new Director of NCIS is Tony DiNozzo, with Michael Weatherly back on a season-long arc.
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Tony has the office. Gibbs got visits from his dead for years; Vance's own last conversation was with Ducky. If Vance turns up again, the most likely place to find him is beside Tony's desk, offering advice nobody else in the room can hear.
Previously we wrote: Why did The Diplomat kill Dennison? David Gyasi's exit was kept secret right up until the episode aired