‘CSI’ season 16: Will Nick Stokes even be addressed at all in series finale?

Anytime that you have a big series finale of a show, you want to ensure that you have as many longtime cast members present as possible in order to help effectively send of the show. This is especially true when your show is “CSI,” and you have been around since really the start of the millennium.

The news broke earlier this summer that despite participating in every season of the CBS show to date, George Eads would not be coming back in the last episode as Nick Stokes. Technically, the character was written out in the season 15 finale, but the hope was that he would be coming back for the swan song. Heck, creator Anthony Zuiker even wrote the episode thinking that he would be around, and there had to be rewrites when he opted not to take part.

As it turns out, it doesn’t seem like Nick is going to be addressed now in the two-hour movie (airing September 27) that is serving as the series finale. Zuiker confirms it to TVLine, though we do know that other longtime cast members including William Petersen and Marg Helgenberger have thankfully decided that they will take part.

Just in case you still need a reason to be excited for what these two hours bring to you, let’s go ahead and serve a massive slice of hype your way courtesy of Anthony to the aforementioned website:

“The last five minutes of this show are as good as anything you’ll ever see in TV and cinema … For the fans, and for the journey of the 16 years we’ve been doing this, those last five minutes are really, really endearing. It’s going to be timeless.”

We will have more news on the “CSI” series finale soon enough, so our advice to you is to stay tuned!