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The confrontation between Nick Torres and McGee’s son Mateo acquires a new owner when Tony DiNozzo is revealed as the person shot. Revisiting its previous cliffhanger, the Season 24 premiere of NCIS, “Wayward Son,” inserts Michael Weatherly’s returning character into a crisis already carrying family and professional stakes for the current team. Tony has been helping Torres investigate Mateo. His presence gives the resolution another relationship to draw on, and the episode steadily transfers its attention toward the colleague coming home.
That transfer continues through the investigation. Tony gives Kasie Hines the lead she needs to locate a critical file, helps McGee get Mateo safely out of a diner, and confronts the antagonists near the end. The returning star receives a succession of useful things to do.
This is an effective way to restore him to the series: each intervention establishes a reason for his presence beyond the pleasure of recognition. It also concentrates the episode’s problem-solving around him. The franchise demonstrates how readily it can accommodate Tony by making several other characters’ difficulties occasions for his assistance.
Weatherly gives that arrangement considerable appeal. His banter with Sean Murray retains the ease of Tony and McGee’s established relationship, while their conversation about parenthood acknowledges lives lived during the separation. The teasing has survived; the responsibilities surrounding it have changed. With Gary Cole’s Parker, Weatherly finds a different comic partner. Cole’s deadpan delivery gives Tony room without requiring Parker to recreate Gibbs’s relationship with him. These exchanges matter to a series bringing an old favorite into a changed ensemble. Tony’s return can generate new interactions instead of obliging everyone else to participate in a reunion.
The dialogue occasionally makes familiarity useful at the level of storytelling, too. Tony’s reference to The Goonies communicates his plan without laborious explanation. A pop-culture allusion becomes shared shorthand rather than an interruption for a nostalgic wink.
Parker’s dismissal by LaRoche also lets Parker and Tony work together outside the agency’s command structure, creating space for their rapport. The premise is convenient, but the actors make the resulting partnership credible. The premiere is strongest when it allows the audience to discover how Tony fits with these people through what they accomplish together.
The move into the director’s office asks for a larger leap. Vance’s death left a vacancy that “Wayward Son” fills by removing Gabriel LaRoche and appointing Tony, described as the Secretary of the Navy’s first choice. Tony’s investigative help and his calming presence around McGee supply evidence of judgment and maturity. Running an agency introduces responsibilities this episode has barely tested. The appointment trades heavily on the trust accumulated around a familiar character, assisted by a predecessor whose principal qualification appears to be making the succession welcome.
Seamus Dever’s LaRoche repeatedly threatens colleagues who disregard his authority, fires Parker, and refuses to credit the team’s understanding of Mateo’s behavior. The repetition makes his leadership feel narrow, with little room for an institutional disagreement that might have substance.
His firing of Parker proves especially convenient: it manufactures the circumstances for one of the premiere’s most enjoyable pairings. LaRoche then loses his own job off-screen. There is an amusing efficiency to this personnel department, which removes the obstacle after it has finished arranging the new director’s social introductions. The dramatic cost is a succession smoothed by caricature rather than developed through competing ideas of leadership.
McGee bears a quieter cost. Murray’s anxious diner scene with Mateo gives the episode an emotional pressure that Tony’s helpfulness cannot settle by itself. A father trying to understand his son needs something different from an investigator trying to resolve a case.
Yet Mateo’s clearance from murder charges reaches us through McGee’s report, with no final encounter between them. The legal problem receives an answer; the relationship receives little opportunity to absorb it. This omission matters because the premiere had already invested in McGee’s parental predicament, then lets the returned colleague’s new position claim the visible payoff.
That distribution of change extends into the workplace. McGee remains senior field agent under Parker while Tony returns to take the directorship. Nothing here establishes that McGee deserves the job or that his career will stay fixed for the season. Within this episode, however, the veteran who has remained with the team receives less consequential movement than the veteran brought back into it. Familiarity serves Tony as a resource for reinvention while McGee’s familiarity helps keep the existing arrangement in place.
Tony’s own family history receives a similarly economical treatment. References to his security business, boarding school, and Boston make his circumstances intelligible without requiring viewers to reconstruct NCIS: Tony & Ziva. That accessibility is valuable.
A connected franchise should be able to move a character between series without turning an episode into homework. The compression becomes less satisfying when parenthood is used as evidence of Tony’s growth. McGee’s anxiety is enacted with Mateo in the diner; Tony’s domestic responsibilities largely arrive as information about people elsewhere. The reunion with colleagues gets the richer dramatic treatment.
Ziva’s reported encouragement of the appointment deserves to be taken seriously, and her absence supplies no basis for inventing resentment or a breakup. It still leaves the family’s accommodation of Tony’s return thinly developed. Tali is at boarding school, Ziva’s language-school work places her away from his Washington assignment, and his new office requires a substantial commitment. We hear that Ziva supported the job; we do not see how that support became an arrangement for living apart.
NCIS Season 24 premiered on CBS on October 6, 2026. The long-running procedural drama returns to follow the Major Case Response Team as they handle high-stakes naval criminal investigations while welcoming back familiar faces to the fold.
Where to Watch NCIS Season 24 Online
Full Credits
Title: NCIS Season 24
Distributor: CBS, Paramount+
Release date: October 6, 2026
Rating: TV-14
Running time: 42–45 minutes per episode
Director: Diana Valentine, Marc Roskin, José Clemente Hernandez
Writers: Steven D. Binder, Christopher J. Waild, Marco Schnabel
Producers and Executive Producers: Steven D. Binder, David J. North, Mark Horowitz, Scott Williams, Chas. Floyd Johnson
Cast: Sean Murray, Wilmer Valderrama, Katrina Law, Brian Dietzen, Diona Reasonover, Michael Weatherly, Gary Cole
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): William Webb
Editors: Gregory Gontz, Kieran Turner
Composer: Brian Kirk
The Review
NCIS Season 24
Tony DiNozzo’s return gives the Season 24 premiere lively chemistry and a credible connection between the old ensemble and the current team. The franchise is less careful with what it rearranges around him: McGee’s family crisis loses its emotional follow-through, LaRoche simplifies the leadership transition, and Tony’s domestic commitments become explanatory shorthand. “Wayward Son” makes the homecoming enjoyable while giving its consequences too little dramatic space.
PROS
- Weatherly and Cole establish an engaging new partnership.
- Tony and McGee’s parenting conversation acknowledges their growth.
- Pop-culture shorthand communicates Tony’s plan efficiently.
CONS
- LaRoche’s repetitive obstruction oversimplifies the succession.
- Mateo’s clearance replaces a needed father-son encounter.
- Tony’s changed family arrangement receives thin dramatic treatment.
