NCIS Boss Drops Season 24 Hints: New Developments For Jess And Nick... And 'Dark Parker'?

Another season of "NCIS" is in the books... but we're already looking ahead to the next one.

After airing its season finale this week — check out our post mortem here — the long-running CBS procedural will return for Season 24 (!) this fall, and the writers are already mulling what's next for Parker and the team. "We have a lot of things on the table," showrunner Steven D. Binder tells TVLine, starting with a resolution to the long-simmering hints of a potential romance between team members Nick Torres and Jess Knight.

"We certainly have been continually impregnating the moments with Torres and Knight whenever they're together," Binder admits. ("Impregnating," huh? Interesting choice of words.) "In a situation like that, where you have people who have feelings and the heart wants what the heart wants, and sometimes it might not be the right thing, all the parties involved are still figuring out what they want [and] coming to terms with maybe feelings they didn't realize they had. That's playing out before our eyes."

The Nick-Jess storyline is "going to continue to play out" next season, Binder adds, but it won't be "much longer before some kind of head is going to be reached, one way or the other, for good or for bad."

The season-ending cliffhanger, however, that saw McGee's son Mateo pull a gun on Nick before a gunshot rang out will be resolved right away when Season 24 debuts. "Mateo, we're going to have to get into that immediately," showrunner Steven D. Binder says. "I don't think we're going to be stretching that thing out forever. It's not going to be a Carla situation," he promises, referring to the recurring crime boss played by Rebecca De Mornay.

As for Mateo, "I think he got involved in something, and we've got to get him uninvolved with it," Binder notes, but that storyline "may set the table for something larger that we spend a little more time on over the season."

We may see another side to Parker next season, too — a darker side. "As [Wayne] Rogers says to him, quite nastily and unflatteringly to him, 'You're a bad seed. I know you, you've been playing cop, and I know what you really are.' I don't think he's entirely wrong. I think that speech is in there for a reason," Binder teases.

It sure seemed like Parker teamed up with Gibbs to take out Wayne Rogers with a sniper bullet, and that could just be the start of what Binder refers to as "Dark Parker" next season: "I think something has been unlocked inside Parker, [and] we will see the dark fruit of that over Season 24. There's nature and nurture, and he's nurtured himself into a lawman, but his nature is his nature, and he just apparently killed a man... It's like a dog once they taste blood. I love Parker, but he's the most interesting when he's enthused, to put it that way."

Want more scoop on "NCIS"? Got questions or tips about another TV show? Email us at asktvline@tvline.com!