‘NCIS’ season 11 spoilers: Michael Weatherly confirms start of ‘New Orleans’ filming

“NCIS” has done ambitious episodes before, and luckily, they are also very familiar with the idea of a backdoor pilot. After all, this is a show that technically spawned from “JAG” over a decade ago, so the mythology of this entire franchise stretches back for quite an extensive span of time. They’ve also launched the Los Angeles version of the show, which in turn tried to launch the “NCIS: Red” spin-off last year to no avail.

Now, the team is officially hard at work this week on making the New Orleans-set potential spin-off a success. Michael Weatherly (Tony) posted on Twitter a photo of Scott Bakula’s chair on set, and things are officially a go. Most of the cast of this particular show has already come out, and you have a pretty ambitious crop of people.

As for what we know about this story so far, it will obviously contain a mixture of old and new characters, and introduce us to a group that could become permanent fixtures on their own show in the fall. This story will also reportedly span over two episodes, which should give you a good chance to get to know everything.

In the end, the quality of this episode is going to depend heavily on what we end up seeing when it comes to this show in the future. Personally, we do still believe that it has a pretty good shot of being picked up, mostly because “NCIS” has such a huge audience, it has Mark Harmon on board as an executive producer, and at some point, it could end up even replacing the flagship show in the lineup. “NCIS” is getting up there in seasons, and while it may not be going away anytime soon, it’s always nice to have options.

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Photo: CBS