NCIS season 17: How could Ziva’s story arc play out?

Let’s face it — we’ve learned a lot over the past few days about NCIS season 17 and Cote de Pablo. There are going to be four appearances from the actress presumably this season, and Ziva David’s story is going to start in the premiere. We’ve also seen an epic, extended trailer like no other that gives us a good sense of some of what is coming.

Now, we want to focus on this: How do you chart out the remainder of the character’s journey? How do you set up her arc? Based on what we know so far, we’ll see Ziva in the premiere, an episode shortly after the premiere, and then one later in the fall and one in the winter — presumably early 2020. That seems, roughly to be the plan.

So how does CBS structure this? We could see it going a little like this. Note that this is just our hopes for when Ziva could appear. We bold that just because some publication will probably come and try to report this as fact.

For more analysis on the recent extended trailer, watch our video below! Once you do that, be sure to subscribe to CarterMatt on YouTube and view our NCIS playlist for more updates!

The premiere – Set the stage for Ziva’s storyline to come, and give a lot of the little fan-service moments, including spending some time with this character and Gibbs, McGee, and Palmer. Allow her to reunite with some old favorites!

Episode 3-4 – We think that you would want to schedule Cote’s next episode early on to keep people engaged, so having another installment in mid-October would be ideal.

Episode 8-11 – There are a couple of different ways that NCIS could think about Ziva’s last appearance of 2019. You could try to bring the character back during November sweeps — or, you could bring the character back for the final episode of the year, and turn it into a two-parter.

Episode 12-15 – This is where we would imagine the final Ziva episode would fall. If NCIS wants to make a two-parter, having the final episode be the first one of 2019 makes a good bit of sense. Yet, you could argue that having Ziva in February sweeps is ideal for ratings. Some of the placement of her story arc could depend on Cote’s schedule, plus also the schedule for whoever else you wanted to bring in. For example, if you want Michael Weatherly to play Tony one more time, you may film one appearance around when he has a break from Bull.

How do you want Ziva’s NCIS season 17 episodes to be structured?

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This article was written by Jessica Carter. Be sure to follow her on Twitter!