NCIS: Origins Season 1 Finale Will Feature The Return Of An NCIS: Los Angeles Character

Contains spoilers for "NCIS: Origins" Season 1, Episode 18 — "Cecilia"

Expect a major blast from the future when "NCIS: Origins" wraps up its first season this month. The episode, titled "Cecilia," will find Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Austin Stowell) coping with the investigation surrounding the murder of Pedro Hernandez (Thomas Rosales Jr.) — the drug dealer who killed Gibbs' family. Gibbs is hiding a dark secret: he murdered Hernandez in Tijuana before joining NIS, unable to stomach the man's constant taunting. Gibbs will end up working with a future ally and head of another division of the "NCIS" world – Lara Macy (Claire Berger), currently a military police investigator. 

In the future, Macy ends up climbing the ranks at NCIS. She'll become the Special Agent in Charge at the Office of Special Projects in the Los Angeles arm of the NIS. Fans of the franchise will recall that she had a big role in "Legend," the "NCIS" two-parter that served as a backdoor pilot for "NCIS: Los Angeles." Played there by Louise Lombard, Lara evolves into a gutsy, go-get-'em type who also serves as the team's driving force. 

But her part in the show's storyline was taken over by the much older Hetty Lange (Linda Hunt) when the California-set spin-off was greenlit to series; during the events of "Legend," Lara is reassigned to a French outpost so Hetty can take over. Lara is eventually killed off on "NCIS" during Season 7's "Patriot Down" in a violent murder. Fans also know she will have a huge role in assuring that Gibbs has a future in "NCIS."  

As any "NCIS" fan knows, Lara Macy will be the one, per Leroy Gibbs, who botches her case against him so severely that he will complain about her competency decades later when they are forced to work together. The murder of Pedro Hernandez will ultimately be declared a cold case with no known suspects. It will linger in the division's records for years, until an intrepid Abigail Sciuto (Pauley Perrette) and Tim McGee (Sean Murray) solve the crime while teaching a class about cold cases in Mexico and realize their beloved boss has a dark secret. 

Fans already know what many of Gibbs' friends at Camp Pendleton don't — that Gibbs definitely killed Hernandez, using a sniper rifle to slay him at a distance in a way that made "NCIS" fans scratch their heads. Soon after he returned home from the Gulf War, Gibbs sawed off his leg cast and tracked Hernandez down, killing him and slipping back over the border.

Eventually cleared of the crime, Gibbs is free to go on and have an incredible career with the NIS — but it will become a huge secret he'll repress for years. At true odds with his fair-is-fair, rules-laden feelings about life, his friends will be stunned when he fully confesses the truth to them during Season 16 of "NCIS." Gibbs will keep this secret closely held for 30 more years, and few will ever hear him admit to it. But will there be a twist to Gibb's tale, untold on both the mothership series and "Origins" itself? Only time — and Macy's investigation — will tell.