'NCIS' Season 11 Spoilers: Cast Says Final Farewell in Season Finale (TRAILER VIDEO)
"NCIS" fans will bid farewell to one beloved character during this week's season finale. Cast members are calling it an "emotional" season finale, one that differs from all the others before it.
"It was significant enough for us to step back and say that we wanted to say goodbye to him properly," executive producer Gary Glasberg told TVFanatic.com about former guest star Ralph Waite. "We put our heads together and decided we wanted to do a story about Leroy Jethro Gibb and Harmon's character. We do some flashbacks, we get to see him as a child and we get to see him with a young Ralph Waite … I think it will mean a lot to the audience and it's definitely meant a lot to us from a storytelling standpoint. It's a nice episode, it's an emotional episode, it's an informative episode and it gives people some closure."
When Waite passed away in real life, "NCIS" producers had to decide what to do with his character. Instead of merely writing him off, they decided to pay tribute to the man whose character gave us Gibbs as we know him now. He'd been on for a few episodes and fans enjoyed watching his relationship with his son and the rest of the "NCIS" team.
"It's definitely new territory for him [Gibbs] and, honestly, I'm really anxious to see how Harmon plays it," Glasberg said. "I'll tell you what we've done this year, which is a little different: we made the decision not to do a cliffhanger and we did that intentionally because this year has been challenging."
In other news, at the end of last week's episode, viewers learned that coroner Jimmy Palmer and his wife were expecting their first child. The couple had been trying to adopt and had been approved by a mother, but at the last minute, she backed out, leaving Palmer devastated. Now fans will get to see what happens when Palmer finally sees his wife and how they handle the news of the pregnancy.
Watch a trailer for Tuesday's episode here:
