‘Are You Kidding?’: NCIS Writer Reflects On Being Told To Kill Off One Of The Show’s Biggest Recurring Characters Before Leaving The Series
In its 22nd season on the 2024 TV schedule, NCIS has been a long-running series with many of its significant characters, both main and recurring, no longer appearing. One such character is Muse Watson, who portrayed Mike Franks, Leroy Jethro Gibbs’ mentor. Watson appeared in 20 episodes from the third to the fifteenth seasons on CBS. However, his later appearances were as a ghostly Franks, as his character was killed off near the end of Season 8. The writer who ended Franks’ life, Jesse Stern, commented that he was instructed to write the character out just before he himself departed from NCIS.