Mark Harmon, The NCIS Star Bids Farewell to The Series After 18 Years
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After around 18 years, Mark Harmon is handing in his badge as Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs. Harmon said goodbye to his longtime employer on Monday night’s NCIS episode, “Great Wide Open,” the fourth episode of season 19. Since the show’s inception in 2003, he’s been in the role.
Gibbs made a decision of retirement in Alaska after solving a case with Special Agent Timothy McGee that is Sean Murray. “I’m not going back home,” Gibbs explains to his partner that he found a “sense of peace” that has to move away from him since the deaths of his wife and daughter, which he is “not ready to let go of.” Gibbs then says a sentimental goodbye to McGee, saying, “I couldn’t have asked for anyone better to watch my back for the past 18 years than you, Tim.”
The Hollywood Reporter got to know from a source in June that Harmon was planning to leave NCIS before the show’s 19th season. He did, however, sign a one-year contract with the show which says he has to appear in the most recent episode in “a limited capacity.” Gibbs almost lost his job in season 18 after being suspended for assaulting a murderer, as well as his life in the finale when he was nearly killed by a boat explosion.
“I’ve always thought if there’s ever a time where the writers are walking into the room and going, ‘I don’t know what to do’ then I think we all have to look at each other and call it a day,” Harmon told People in 2019. “But we’re not there yet.” He added, “I’ve been around long enough to know what this is. That commitment is part of what I signed up for; I know when this show ends that’s it—there won’t be anything else like this for me.” After the episode was released, Steven D. Binder, NCIS’s executive producer, and showrunner gave tribute to Harmon.
Mark Harmon Career
Harmon, Thomas Mark, was born on 2 September 1951. He used to play a football player and an American actor, producer, director, and voice actor. People know him because of his character of Leroy Jethro Gibbs in the series NCIS. Since the early 1970s, he has also played various roles. Originally a college football player, his role on St. Elsewhere earned him the People magazine title of “Sexiest Man Alive” in 1986. He spent his 1990s in this character, in The West Wing he landed the role of Secret Service special agent Simon Donovan, for which in 2002, he got an Emmy nomination for his acting in a four-episode storey arc.
