‘NCIS: Origins’: Austin Stowell Talks Gibbs & Lala’s Pool Moment, What Will Be ‘Very Different’ in Season 2 & More

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the NCIS: Origins Season 1 finale “Cecilia.”]

Austin Stowell was shocked by the ending of the NCIS: Origins Season 1 finale, just like fans are sure to be — and he found out about its events a bit later than you might expect.

The first season of the NCIS prequel, following a young Gibbs (Mark Harmon in the mothership, now the narrator and an executive producer) as he first joins NCIS, ended with his teammate and possible love interest, Lala (Mariel Molino), possibly dead in a car wreck. This happened after she put herself on the line to save him when her friend Macy (Claire Berger) began investigating the murder of the man who killed his wife and daughter (and whom he killed). The finale also introduced the younger version of one of Gibbs’ future ex-wives, Diane (Kathleen Kenny)!

Below, Stowell discusses Gibbs’ Origins Season 1 journey with us. (Plus, read a deep dive on the finale with showrunners David J. North and Gina Lucita Monreal here.)

Is Lala dead? 

Austin Stowell: Truth be told, I don’t know. We are all being kept in the dark. I didn’t even know until the table read that that’s what would happen. All of us were kept in the dark about that scene. When we originally got those scripts kind of as a two-part 17 and 18, the last scene was omitted. So all I knew was that she went to my apartment, that she started to write down the note and then heard the voicemail.

How do you think Gibbs would react to her potential death? It would just be another loss — Shannon and Kelly’s deaths are still so fresh, then there was Ruth, everything else…

He would obviously handle it with measure and with grace as he does most anything. He wouldn’t have a knee-jerk reaction at all. No. This would be, what he would consider, another female loss at his doing, and this would only further insulate him. It would make him draw more within himself. And it might be what actually happens because the guy that we know that Mark played for years and years is an incredibly isolated human being and trusts no one but himself. And so it would fall in line should that be the case. Personally, as an actor, I want Mariel back because I love working with her as an actress and as a human being. So very selfishly I want that to happen. But it would also make sense for Gibbs to lose somebody that he’s gotten close to, although I don’t think they’ve gotten close enough yet to lose her, in my personal opinion.

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In Mark Harmon’s voiceover, he says he loved Lala all along and still does, but at this point for your Gibbs, how does he think he feels about her?

It’s a bit of the forbidden fruit, and Gibbs is too resigned to the job to taste it. He had an opportunity there in the pool to be romantic with her and he chooses to do the right thing — what is the righteous thing in his mind — and that’s to tell her the truth, that, “This is what I did. I want you to know because not only are you a member of my team, but I care very deeply for you.” It might be the last time he ever sees her because at that point he’s either going to face charges or he might just finally go through with what he tried to do in Kuwait and go join Shannon and Kelly.

Talk about filming that pool scene because it was something that all season had been building towards.

When we read the script, Mariel and I were a bit let down after all this buildup. There was nothing. Yes, we’re in the pool and we’re very, very close, but not a kiss, nothing. And Kyle [Schmid] was joking, he yelled out at the table read, “Tell her after, Gibbs!” I think we, like the audience, were waiting for something more intimate. You want to see the moment where they finally get together, where Gibbs gives into the more personal side, that he puts away the soldier, the federal agent, and gives into some human emotion. But who knows, maybe it’s down the line. We don’t know.

Working with Mariel is always a real joy. She is so committed to that character. She was perfect for that character from the moment she walked in the door, and she’s easy to fall in love with. She’s easy to have played out this romance, this potential romance with her because of what she brings to the character because of who she is as a woman. She is so alluring. She is very strong and confident, and that’s all very sexy and very attractive. And so I think shooting that scene was a lot of fun for the two of us, but a little bit anticlimactic in that the pool was cold, we didn’t even get a kiss out of it. and that’s it.

How much will Gibbs regret not kissing her?

That will not come into his mind at all. It’ll all be about her safety and his involvement in what might be her death, her injury, her, I don’t know, whether she’s in a coma or he saves her, we don’t know. This is a big reason why I’m waiting for the next script and can’t wait to read because I want to know what happens. I’m assuming this is not far from where she lives and the house where — nothing is too, too far away. And so maybe on his ride back home, he finds her. I don’t know. I have all these kind of fantasies that I play out in my mind. And what if the Jeep blows up? What if she’s gone? What if while he’s trying to save her, he shows up and then he sees it, he’s there to witness? All of these summer nightmares and summer dreams. I don’t have an answer to that. The options are both light and dark, but the romance will be the last thing on his mind. It will be very much about her being OK.

We meet Diane, and we know about the Gibbs and Diane relationship. So talk about filming that like introduction, knowing how key it is.

It was such an interesting scene because Gibbs goes from doing one of the hardest things you have to do after someone closest to you passes – having done that myself, to clean up the belongings of a loved one is arguably as painful as the moment when you find out or when you’re there, the moment when it happens, that you are aware of their passing. And so to have this very warm, bubbly, beautiful woman walk into his life at that moment is wonderful to see onscreen because you can see it does break him out of his spell a little bit. It breaks the moment of despair. Not that he’s infatuated with her from the moment that he meets her, but she does have the ability to get his attention and to have him get off his butt and start taking her around the house. He does kind of hop to when she comes in the room. It’s certainly not a roaring fire, but you can tell there’s the littlest sparks there because he doesn’t turn her away. He goes along with showing her around and with the process of selling the house. There’s at least that much.

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This is a Gibbs who’s more emotional than the one for 19 seasons on NCIS. How much of a role do you think what happened with Luke plays a role in the stoic version of Gibbs he becomes?

Yeah, I think you’re going to see a very different version of Gibbs next season. He’s certainly not going back to therapy. That’ll be the last time he ever brings it up to Franks, I know that much. I think he learns that he can really only trust himself and maybe a couple of others, and that list is very short. It might just be Franks at this point. This is the beginning of what we see as the character that we know, that he’s gotten it all out of his system and so far this kind of crash-course season emotionally and professionally and personally for Gibbs, it hasn’t been working.

I wouldn’t say Gibbs is in a great spot even before all this starts to unravel. He doesn’t know how to handle this situation at work with Lala, these feelings that he’s having for her. He doesn’t know how to handle those. He’s awkward. I’ve really tried to play the awkwardness of Gibbs before. And then when he’s pushed to the limit, he goes and acts and typically he has the right frame of mind. He does the right thing at the right time, but the in-between moments, getting there, he’s kind of fumbling around. And Season 2, I think we’re going to see a more stubborn version of Gibbs, a more steadfast in his own opinions and thoughts [version], and that you’re going to have to prove him wrong or yourself right in the future because at this point, he’s not willing to trust much of anybody.

Gibbs bringing in the wood and tools and Jackson (Robert Taylor) suggesting some kind of ceremony for his family since he missed the burial… Are we about to see at least his first attempt at building a boat?

Could be. As somebody who loves to be on the water myself and has a lifelong affair with boats, I’m very much ready for the first boat. … But we know that Gibbs in the future still has a very difficult relationship with his father. So I’m not sure that Gibbs takes Jackson’s invitation to have a ceremony. It might just be something he wants to put to rest — especially after what he’s about to find out of Lala, that will send him reeling. No matter what it is, no matter what the outcome is with Lala that will send Gibbs reeling because it’s his fault. It may not be, but in his mind it is, and all of it, it’s his fault. None of this would’ve happened if he wasn’t the man who he is.

Maybe that’s why he has this deep-rooted difficulty with his father because he thinks his father made him who he is, as most boys do, and so he’s looking to find reasons for all of this trauma that has happened seemingly at his hand, and he can’t find a reason. And I think that’s what we spend 19 seasons watching Mark Harmon do really gracefully. That’s a difficult motivation to play as an actor, trying to figure out why. Just trying to figure out purpose. It’s a simple thing. Most of us are going through it all the time. And I think that’s the beauty of what Mark did. He played it so simplistically and very naturally, that it’s just something that we all struggle with or at least most of us do. Lord knows it’s why I have been in therapy since I was 18.

How was playing the Gibbs versus Macy’s scenes, especially that first interrogation as he gets angry, slamming his fist down on the table? It kind of felt like he needed to let that out.

Claire is an incredible, incredible actress. She came in and the first time we rehearsed that scene together, we did that with Niels [Arden Oplev, director], and he just looked up — Niels always has something to say — and he was giggling a little bit. He goes, “Ooh, this is going to be a lot of fun. The two of you, there’s a real match going on here.” And that’s true. An actor is only as good as their scene partner. And so in that case, I was just trying to keep up with her. She was fantastic. She pushes my buttons, she gets under Gibbs’ skin right away. He knows that she’s right, but he also has so much going on in his brain. He wants to protect his team. He wants to protect himself.

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There has to be feelings of anger towards her because it’s like, “Why this fight? Why are you picking this thread to pull, of all the things to do?” At the end of the day, Gibbs got rid of a very bad guy, got rid of a cartel leader. Yes, he had a personal vendetta against him, but the guy was a murderer, a drug dealer, a thief, a real tyrant. In his brain, he’s wondering, “Why? Why is this the case that you’re making your keystone to your career? Leave me alone. I’ve been through enough.”

And then when she pushes his buttons personally, Gibbs is no great actor. I think he might learn how to do that down the line. But we saw that in Episode 6. He’s learning the ropes at this job. Just because you were a Marine and you’ve gone through training at FLETC doesn’t mean that once you get out there in the field that you’re going to be an all-star at these things. He’s figuring it out as he goes, but the ultimate goal there is to keep the team out of it. That’s why he can’t hold the bluff. He gets angry because he knows how close Franks and Lala at that point are to being involved, and he can’t stand that. That’s just not something he’ll accept, to have members of his team go down because of something that he did.

There’s a question of Randy’s (Caleb Foote) future with the team. How would Gibbs feel about him not being there?

I think Randy has grown on Gibbs. He’s earned Gibbs’ trust. I think Gibbs is so pragmatic though that if somebody doesn’t have it, if you’re not ready, if you’re not there mentally, then you need to go take care of you. You need to not do this job because just like when he was down range in Kuwait or in Panama, you have to be able to trust the guy next to you and fight for the guy next to you. That’s what it’s all about. So if you’re not willing to do that, you do need to step aside. That’s your own duty. It’s not something that he would look down on. He wouldn’t be disappointed. It’s actually very honorable to say, “Hey, I can’t do this job anymore. I have to step aside and let somebody else stand beside you because I’m not there.”

It’s not probably what he would want because then you’re dealing with somebody new and somebody unknown and change is never great when it comes to a profession of high pressure and danger. But it happens. And when it happens, you have to deal with it. People retire, God forbid that you would lose one of your teammates in the line of fire, but there will be changes along the way. The team will not always remain the same. And so it’s not ideal, but Randy wouldn’t lose any respect from Gibbs for making that choice.

What do you want to explore in Season 2 with Gibbs, whether it’s the early days of something we know from his future or something new?

Wow, my mind just went in a lot of different directions. It truly just went out like a spiderweb, what I would want to do. There’s so much. I want to see how the rules start to come into his life. We saw the box of rules early on, but in the move, the box got hidden away somewhere. We saw him throw it out eventually, and then Jackson takes it. So when does he get that back? When does he start fortifying himself?

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Is 'NCIS: Origins' Returning for Season 2?

I’m looking forward to Gibbs landing on his feet and starting to come into himself a bit more, into the guy that we know. Letting go of — this has been a wonderful exploration as an actor in this character to get into what were the months before and after the passing of Shannon and Kelly. But you move on at a certain point and you start a different chapter of your life, and Gibbs’ life, we already know where it goes. We know Gibbs doesn’t join the three-ring circus for a while. He doesn’t go live out of a van and do a cross-country trip. There’s none of that. So how do we start to fill in the story of how we get to the man that we see who’s on that airplane in Season 1, Episode 1 of NCIS, where Gibbs is on Air Force One? He seems very confident and steady in his life at that point. I want to start growing towards that.

I want to start developing the relationship between Franks and Gibbs. This is obviously something that stays in his life until Franks’ passing 35 years from now. There’s the marriages. What will happen? Are we going to see Gibbs get married? Are we going to see him starting to try to build a life with a new woman?

These are all potential events in the storyline, Season 2, 3, and so on I’m really excited to get into. I’m really happy that we showed the audience what has been lore in the NCISverse for a long time. It was really, really fun to see what it was like for Gibbs in the months just after Shannon and Kelly’s passing, what that next year of his life was like. But now I’m excited to move on from that, too. It was a heavy season on me. There were a lot of dark days, and the darkness will always be there. That pain will always be in his heart. It’s not something that will ever go away. We’ve seen that pain still exist for the character that Mark was playing, but how does he start to learn to live with it?

Yeah, and I’m curious to see how Diane is part of it. How lighthearted can that relationship be?

I am not sure. They don’t talk about that marriage very much in NCIS. She shows up as a grown woman, but we don’t hear about how it was for them. All we know is that it didn’t work. Was it that he was married to the job? Was it because of something with Lala? Was it because of his unfinished or inability to move on from Shannon and Kelly? What is it? He admits that at one point, he says, there’s only one woman that I ever really loved, but who’s he talking about there? That’s what I wonder.

Yeah, because Mary Jo (Tyla Abercrumbie) has that line to Lala in the finale about how Gibbs thinks he needs to mourn until he’s 60. That’s his frame of mind right now. It’ll be interesting to see how he gets out of that, what pulls him out.

Right. What is it? I wish I had answers to these things.

NCIS: Origins, Season 2, TBA, CBS