NCIS season 15: Pauley Perrette films final scene as Abby
In a post on Twitter (which CarterMatt has for you below), Pauley said goodbye to many of her co-stars including Sean Murray, Brian Dietzen, Wilmer Valderrama, and Emily Wickersham. Unfortunately, it’s not exactly known at the moment as to why Abby will be saying goodbye to the NCIS world, though we’ve long said that this should really be about a victory for her more so than a loss. With that, we mean mostly that we want to see her actually have a chance to go off and do something else great, as opposed to having something happen to her character that is tragic or depressing. NCIS has already killed off / seemingly killed off enough characters.
Here’s one of the things that surprises us: Perrette is actually leaving the show before the big finale airs — her final episode is coming on May 8. What’s the reasoning for doing things that way? It could be in part in order to make a bigger tribute around the character, while also still setting up something big for the finale that can carry over to the next season. This is certainly far from the first time that NCIS and the franchise overall has done something like this. Heck, we’re just coming off of Shalita Grant leaving NCIS: New Orleans a handful of episodes away from the season 4 finale.
Related – See when the series is returning to CBS with new episodes
The challenge moving forward now with NCIS is abundantly clear, and that is trying to find a believable way in which to move this story forward without Abby and making sure that there is someone ready to replace her on the team. There are some seeds seemingly planted for that already for Casey to step into that role (and she is a character that we already really like!), but this is not going to be so simple as being able to plug someone in. You have to figure out a way in which to give the replacement their own personality and their own story while not suffering under the pressure to replace someone who has been so iconic to the series as a whole. What is probably smart for NCIS is that they have a couple of episodes at the end of this season to experiment with things and then, when the series returns in the fall (it’s almost certainly getting renewed), they can tackle some of this once more.
CBS should offer up some more details regarding the farewell to Abby in the coming weeks — given that this announcement about Perrette’s departure was first handed out earlier this season, we don’t think that the producers are out to blindside anyone with the news of this happening.
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