Following confirmation that Michael Weatherly will indeed return in the upcoming NCIS season as Special Agent Tony DiNozzo, CBS has now officially rev
Following confirmation that Michael Weatherly will indeed return in the upcoming NCIS season as Special Agent Tony DiNozzo, CBS has now officially revealed Ziva David’s (Cote de Pablo) fate. As fans know, Tony has been a mainstay from the very beginning of the flagship procedural until the Season 13 finale, “Family First,” when he left after learning he had a daughter with Ziva. He later appeared briefly as a guest in Season 21 for Ducky’s funeral. Meanwhile, ex-Mossad agent Ziva, on the other hand, was presumed dead off-screen in Season 13, but it turned out that she had actually faked her death.
The duo eventually reunited for the first time since October 2013 in the Paramount+ spin-off NCIS: Tony & Ziva, which was prematurely cancelled last December after only a season, despite the positive reception. Premiering on September 4, 2025, the 10-episode military drama follows the titular duo as they raise their daughter, Tali (Isla Gie), together in Paris. But when Tony’s security company is attacked, they must go on the run across Europe, trying to figure out who is after them so that they can finally get their perfect ending.
Now, Weatherly is set to return in a season-long arc for NCIS Season 24, which premieres next month, leaving fans wondering about Ziva’s return. Fortunately, showrunner Steven D. Binder has provided an answer, confirming via TVLine that Ziva will not appear in Season 24. This, however, doesn’t imply that she has been totally scrapped from the franchise, as the fresh season will address her absence; the series will also explain their daughter Tali’s absence.
“They’re off a couple hours away. The way we address it is Ziva’s hanging out in the town where her daughter is, doing a little helicopter parenting, and Tony’s helicopter parenting in D.C.”
Collider Exclusive · TV Medicine Quiz
Which Fictional Hospital Would You Work Best In?
The Pitt · ER · Grey’s Anatomy · House · Scrubs
Five hospitals. Five completely different ways medicine goes sideways on television — brutal, tumultuous, romantic, brilliant, and ridiculous. Only one of them is the ward your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out exactly where you belong.
The Pitt
ER
Grey’s
House
Scrubs
FIND YOUR HOSPITAL →
01
A critical patient comes through the door. What’s your first instinct?
Medicine under pressure reveals who you actually are.
AStay completely present — block everything else out and work through it step by step, right now.
BTriage quick and delegate — get the right people on the right problems immediately.
CTrust my gut and move — I work best when I stop overthinking and just act.
DAsk the question everyone else is ignoring — what’s the thing that doesn’t fit?
ETake a breath, make a joke to cut the tension, and then get to work — panic helps no one.
NEXT QUESTION →
02
Why did you go into medicine in the first place?
The candid answer says more about you than the one you’d give in an interview.
ABecause I wanted to be where it matters most — right at the edge, when someone’s life is actually on the line.
BBecause I wanted to lend a hand people — genuinely, one patient at a time, in a system that makes it tough.
CBecause I was drawn to the intensity of it — the stakes, the drama, the feeling of being fully alive.
DBecause medicine is the most intriguing puzzle there is — and I needed a problem worth solving.
EBecause I wanted to make a difference — and also, honestly, I didn’t know what else to do with my life.
NEXT QUESTION →
03
What do you actually want from the people you work with?
Who you want beside you under pressure is who you are.
ACompetence and composed — I need people who don’t fall apart when things get bad.
BTrust and reliability — I want to know that when I pass something off, it’s handled.
CConnection — I want colleagues who become family, even if that gets complicated.
DIntelligence and the willingness to be challenged — I have no interest in people who just agree with me.
EFriendship — people I actually like spending twelve hours a day with, because those hours are going to happen either way.
NEXT QUESTION →
04
You lose a patient you fought tough to save. How do you carry it?
Every doctor who’s worked a long shift has had to answer this question.
AI carry it. All of it. I don’t look for ways to put it down — that weight is part of doing this work honestly.
BI process it and move — you have to, or the next patient suffers for the one you just lost.
CI feel it deeply and lean on the people around me — I don’t think you’re supposed to handle that alone.
DI go back over every decision — not to punish myself, but because I need to understand what I missed.
EI grieve it genuinely, find some way to laugh about something unrelated, and try to be kind to myself — imperfectly.
NEXT QUESTION →
05
How would your colleagues describe the way you work?
Your reputation on the floor is usually more right than your self-image.
AIntense and completely present — no miniature talk during a shift, but exactly who you want there.
BSteady and dependable — not the flashiest in the room but never the one who drops something.
CPassionate and occasionally tumultuous — brilliant on the tough cases, prone to drama everywhere else.
DBrilliant and hard — right more often than anyone else, and everyone knows it, including me.
EWarm and self-deprecating — not the most intimidating presence, but genuinely good at this and uncomplicated to like.
NEXT QUESTION →
06
How do you feel about hospital protocol and procedure?
Every institution has rules. What you do with them is a choice.
AProtocol is the floor, not the ceiling — I follow it until the patient needs something it can’t provide.
BI respect it — the system is broken in places, but the structure is there for a reason and I work within it.
CI follow it until my instincts tell me not to — and my instincts are usually right, even when they cause problems.
DRules are for people who haven’t thought tough enough about when to break them.
EI try to follow it and mostly do — with a few memorable exceptions that still come up in meetings.
NEXT QUESTION →
07
What does this job cost you personally?
Nobody works in medicine without paying a price. What’s yours?
AEverything outside these walls — I’ve given this job my full attention and the rest of my life has gone around it.
BMy idealism, mostly — I came in believing the system could be fixed and I’ve made a complicated peace with that.
CStability — my personal life has been as tumultuous as the OR, and that’s not entirely a coincidence.
DMy relationships — I am not uncomplicated to know, and the people who’ve tried to would probably agree.
EMy sense of gravity — I exploit humour as a coping mechanism, which not everyone appreciates in a hospital.
NEXT QUESTION →
08
At the end of a long shift, what keeps you coming back?
The answer to this question is the most candid thing about you.
AThe fact that it’s real — that nothing else I could be doing would matter this much, right now, today.
BThe patients — individual human beings who needed something and got it because I was there.
CThe people I work with — I have walked through impossible things with these people and I’d do it again.
DThe next unsolved case — there’s always another puzzle, and I’m not done yet.
EBecause despite everything — the exhaustion, the loss, the absurdity — I actually love this job.
REVEAL MY HOSPITAL →
Your Assignment Has Been Made
You Belong In…
Your answers have pointed to one fictional hospital above all others. This is the ward your instincts, your temperament, and your particular brand of dysfunction were built for.
The Pitt
You are built for the most unsparing version of emergency medicine television has ever shown — one that puts you inside a single fifteen-hour shift and doesn’t let you look away.
- You need your work to be real, not romanticised — meaning over drama, honesty over aesthetics.
- You find purpose inside the work itself, not in the chaos surrounding it.
- You’ve made peace with the fact that this job takes from you constantly, and gives back in ways that are harder to name.
- Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center demands exactly that kind of person — and you would not want to be anywhere else.
ER
You are the person who keeps the whole floor running — not the most brilliant in the room, but possibly the most vital.
- You show up, do the work, absorb the losses, and come back the next day without needing the job to be anything other than what it is.
- You care about patients as individual human beings, not as cases to solve or dramas to live through.
- You believe in the system even when it fails you — and you understand that emergency medicine is about holding the line just long enough.
- ER is television about endurance. You have it.
Grey’s Anatomy
You came to medicine with your whole self — your ambition, your emotions, your relationships, your history — and you have never quite managed to leave any of it at the door.
- You feel things fully and form deep attachments to the people you work with.
- Your personal and professional lives are permanently, chaotically entangled — and that entanglement drives both your greatest disasters and your most remarkable saves.
- You understand that extraordinary medicine often happens at the intersection of clinical skill and profound human connection.
- It’s messy at Grey Sloan. You would not have it any other way.
House
You are drawn to the problem above everything else — the symptom that doesn’t fit, the diagnosis hiding underneath the obvious one.
- You’re not primarily motivated by the patient as a person — though you are capable of caring, even if you’d deny it.
- You work best when the stakes are highest and the standard answer is wrong.
- Princeton-Plainsboro exists to house one extraordinary, impossible mind — and everyone around that mind is there because they’re clever enough to keep up.
- The only way forward here is to think harder than everyone else in the room. That is exactly what you do.
Scrubs
You understand that medicine is tragic and absurd in almost equal measure — and that the only sane response is to hold both of those things at the same time.
- You are sultry, self-aware, and funnier than most people in your field.
- You exploit humour to get through terrible moments — and at Sacred Heart, that’s not a flaw, it’s a survival strategy.
- You lean on the people around you and let them lean back. The laughter and the grief are genuinely inseparable here.
- Scrubs is a show about learning to become someone worthy of the job. You are still very much in the middle of that process — which is exactly right.
↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ
Why Is Tony Back on ‘NCIS’?
As for what brings Tony back to D.C., he wants to be closer to his daughter, who will also be absent this season. Binder explained that Weatherly’s character, who previously owned a private security firm in Tony & Ziva called Salus Mondiale, is now opening a satellite office in D.C. as his daughter has moved to the U.S. and is attending boarding school. That’s when he hears about something happening with the NCIS, sparking his interest and bringing both worlds into contact. Also, although Tony is technically his own boss, Binder hinted he doesn’t have a formal office in D.C. yet, following a mix-up. Instead of a nice, rented office, the character is in a quirky space called the Arnold T. Gustafson Commerce Suites, a fun set meant to resemble a 1970s-style WeWork.
NCIS Season 24 premieres on October 6, 2026. Stay tuned to Collider for more NCIS news.
Release Date
September 23, 2003
Showrunner
Donald P. Bellisario
Directors
Dennis Smith, Terrence O’Hara, Tony Wharmby, James Whitmore Jr., Thomas J. Wright, Michael Zinberg, Arvin Brown, Rocky Carroll, Diana Valentine, Leslie Libman, Tawnia McKiernan, Colin Bucksey, William Webb, Bethany Rooney, Alrick Riley, Jeff Woolnough, Alan J. Levi, Lionel Coleman, Martha Mitchell, Peter Ellis, Michael Weatherly, Edward Ornelas, Stephen Cragg, Tom Wright
Writers
George Schenck, Frank Cardea, Jesse Stern, John C. Kelley, Jennifer Corbett, Christopher Silber, Reed Steiner, Nicole Mirante-Matthews, Jack Bernstein, Scott J. Jarrett, Matthew R. Jarrett, Kimberly-Rose Wolter, Don McGill, Gil Grant, Frank Military, Nell Scovell, Steven Kriozere, Brian Dietzen, Kate Torgovnick May, Jeff Vlaming, Sydney Mitchel, Katie White, Richard C. Arthur, Laurence Walsh
-
Sean Murray
Timothy McGee
-
david mccallum
Dr. Donald ‘Ducky’ Mallard
