The Depressing Reason Why Gibbs Never Locks His Front Door On NCIS
It's never made clear why Mark Harmon's "NCIS" character Leroy Jethro Gibbs' never locks his front door, but one series alum implied the reason is linked to the murders of his daughter and first wife. While co-hosting "Off Duty: An NCIS Rewatch" podcast with co-star Michael Weatherly, Cote de Pablo speculated that Gibbs' doors remain unlocked "because he has already lost what was most important to him, so he actually doesn't care."
Beforehand, Weatherly had suggested that Gibbs was simply "looking for trouble" in the aftermath of his first wife and daughter's passing. The actor also theorized that because Gibbs' family had died, "he leaves it open just in case they ever come back." While de Pablo didn't agree with Weatherly's answer, she added that it was still "really close" to the "sad" truth.
In the procedural's two-part Season 3 finale, it's revealed that drug dealer Pedro Hernandez intentionally killed Gibbs' daughter, Kelly, and first wife, Shannon, in a fatal car crash. Shannon witnessed Pedro murdering a Marine and planned to testify against him in court. Gibbs later killed Pedro out of revenge.
The deaths of Gibbs' first wife and daughter were further explored on NCIS: Origins
On the prequel series, "NCIS: Origins," fans got to see how exactly a young Leroy Jethro Gibbs (played by Austin Stowell) managed to murder his first wife and daughter's assailant. It was revealed that Gibbs tracked down Pedro Hernandez and shot him from afar.
Co-creator David J. North told TV Insider that not only has the "NCIS" franchise "been building to this for a long time," but that "this was one of the top moments" in Season 1 of "NCIS: Origins."
"It's such a huge part of Gibbs' life and the lore of Gibbs. [Fellow co-creator] Gina [Lucita Monreal] and I, obviously having written on the OG 'NCIS' for so long, have dealt with storylines around it, but really there was a lot of unanswered questions as far as what happened," he continued. "... But here we really wanted to get into ground it in the reality of what would've happened, which is this was still a killer that NIS and no other people authorities could find. So how did Gibbs do it?"
Stowell also addressed the storyline in a 2024 interview, saying, "If someone you love was murdered... and all of the sudden you had the key to the door, and you knew that the person who was responsible for their death was on the other side of it... how long would you wait?"