‘NCIS’ Season 18 Hit With Even More Delays After Only Airing 2 New Episodes

Just two episodes into the new season of NCIS, CBS is already shaking up the schedule. After airing its milestone 400th episode, NCIS will be taking a short break. When the procedural returns for Season 18, Episode 3, fans will see the team head into a “wild world of modern-day treasure hunting.”

The ‘NCIS’ time jumps are confusing fans

During the cold open of the NCIS season 18 premiere fans witnessed a scene that appeared to show Leroy Gibbs (Mark Harmon) shooting Timothy McGee (Sean Murray) twice. After that brief opening scene that had a time stamp of March 2020, the show jumped back in time to November 2019.

The remainder of the episode featured Gibbs teaming up with FBI agent Tobias Fornell (Joe Spano). They picked up an old season 16 storyline related to a drug kingpin that sold Fornell’s daughter heroin.

NCIS jumped back even further in time for the second episode of the season, which also happened to be episode 400 overall. Titled “Everything Starts Somewhere,” it gave fans a look at the beginning of Gibbs and Ducky’s (David McCallum) friendship.

Even though time jumping is a common story technique used in dramas like This Is Us and Breaking Bad, some NCIS fans are having a hard time keeping up with the old and new storylines.

After CBS released the teaser for the upcoming episode titled “Blood and Treasure,” fans voiced their frustration.

“And we STILL don’t know why Gibbs was taking pot shots at McGee in the season premiere. This season just seems off to me,” wrote one unhappy fan.

The hiatus will only last 1 week

The pandemic is one of the biggest reasons for the time jumping during season 18. The cast and crew still had four episodes to shoot when they were forced to shut down production in March. This moved the special 400th episode to season 18, an episode they had already written and planned for.

After a six-month break, the cast and crew were finally able to return to the set in September. However, instead of picking the story up in the present day, the showrunners decided to jump back into a “pre-COVID world” for the first few episodes of season 18.

Before they did that, they teased fans with a cold open that appears to be set in the present day. Or at least the very near future.

According to Express, after airing the first two episodes of the new season, NCIS is already taking a one-week break. It isn’t clear why the drama series is taking a break so early in the season. But of course, the assumption is that it had something to do with COVID-related delays.

A new ‘NCIS’ clip teases a treasure hunt

CBS recently released a 22-second trailer for the third episode of season 18. It confirms that the team will go on a treasure hunt after forensic scientist Kasie Hines (Diona Reasonover) produces a map of a dead body. It also confirms that the series will remain in the past and continue Gibbs and Fornell’s off-the-books mission.

“The discovery of two dead bodies in a forest leads the NCIS team into the wild world of modern-day treasure hunting. Also, Gibbs and Fornell get deeper into their search for the opioid kingpin,” the episode synopsis reads.

The team will have the opportunity to find a fortune worth $2 million dollars, and it’s something they might be able to keep. At the same time, Fornell is going undercover while delving deeper into the drug racket he and Gibbs are trying to take down.

In the teaser clip, Fornell is working at a burger joint and is wearing a nametag that reads “Toby.” According to International Business Times, NCIS will stay in the past for a few more weeks before returning to the present day.

NCIS returns with an all-new episode on Tuesday, December 8 on CBS.