NCIS season 16 finale photo: Gibbs tries to console Fornell

A week from Tuesday, the big NCIS finale is going to be here in “Daughters” and through that, we’ll see the return of Joe Spano’s Fornell. Of course, we wish that the return automatically equaled a lot of fun, happy times for the actor and Mark Harmon … but it’s a little bit different from that. As a matter of fact, this is one of the most desperate times of Fornell’s life. He’s already lost so much and now, he’s running the risk of losing his daughter.

Want to get more discussion on Tuesday’s new episode? If so, remember to check out what we’ve got at the bottom of this article — a new video all about what lies ahead! After you watch this, remember to subscribe to CarterMatt on YouTube for some additional updates. We also have a full NCIS playlist that we like to think is especially worth your time.

The photo above is the one of the first official images that we’ve got for the upcoming episode, one that is going to clearly put Gibbs and Fornell through their paces. This scene takes place within the walls of a hospital, one where Gibbs and Sloane are visiting to check in on Tobias and his daughter. (Fittingly, this episode is entitled “Daughters,” which we think is a reference to the fact that Gibbs lost his own daughter in the past.) Emily is hospitalized because of an opiate overdose, and from here, be prepared to see Fornell do what he can in order to investigate and get to the bottom of the situation.

As you can imagine, all of this comes back to one of the central themes of the latter part of this season, and that is this whole idea of vigilante justice and what someone like Gibbs really needs to be doing in order to make sure that bad people “get what they deserve.” Let’s say that the people responsible for what happened to Emily aren’t the sort you can take down by legal means; is Gibbs willing to do to them what he did previously to Hernandez, who was responsible for killing Kelly and Shannon? It’s something that he may need to think about, especially after just coming clean about precisely what happened years ago to the rest of the agents.

All signs point towards this being one of the best episodes of the season — if you look around the internet, you hear nothing but praise from people associated with the show over the quality of the script. Regardless of whether or not there’s some sort of impactful tease included in here for a season 17, you can at least feel good that this episode is going to leave season 16 on an important, emotional note — one that will leave you asking more questions for the future.

If you want some more valuable NCIS insight…

Then be sure to check out this link, since that is where you can get another bit of scoop for “Daughters,” at least in the context of Ziva theories.

What do you want to see right now regarding the NCIS season 16 finale? Be sure to let us know right now in the comments! (Photo: CBS.)

This article was written by Jessica Carter and you can follow her on Twitter here.