NCIS: Origins EP Teases More 'Tentpole' Flashbacks — Including 'Some Pretty Good Surprises'

The following contains spoilers from the Oct. 28 episode of CBS' NCIS: Origins.

The fourth episode of CBS' NCIS: Origins revolved around a little girl who went missing after witnessing a murder. The search for, and then bonding with, the young lass understandably got Gibbs reflecting on the tragic loss of his daughter Kelly, in the same car crash that killed his wife Shannon.

Gibbs specifically flashed back to a moment earlier in the year 1991 when, while wrapping his Desert Storm tour in Kuwait, he first got the news of his family's murder. So bereft was Gibbs, he aimlessly sauntered across the desert base while it was under attack, as enemy missiles landed and exploded him.

Was looking back on that seminal moment the last of such Gibbs flashbacks, bringing that tragic part of his story full circle, in a way? Or will NCIS: Origins continue to dot even more i's and cross additional t's regarding Gibbs' pre-NIS time?

"The flashbacks are going to continue," co-showrunner Gina Lucita Monreal tells TVLine. "Part of the DNA of the show is that we want to show how our characters got to the place where we meet them, so we're really interested in showing these stories that reveal the 'making of' these characters."

Monreal, who showruns NCIS: Origins with David J. North, says that while longtime viewers of the NCIS mothership may be able to guess some of the big moments the prequel spinoff will flashback to, the lead-up to and context for those story beats could surprise.

"We know the tentpoles from OG show that are in Gibbs' past," she says, "but I think we've packed some pretty good surprises as to how we get from one tentpole to the next."

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