The NCIS Season 24 trailer brings plenty of danger and unfinished business, but for longtime fans, one moment is going to be especially difficult to ignore.
Michael Weatherly is back as Tony DiNozzo.
After more than two decades on television, NCIS has become remarkably good at doing something shows aren’t supposed to be able to do forever: change while still feeling familiar.
The newly released NCIS Season 24 trailer may be one of the best examples yet.
The CBS drama returns this fall with the mystery surrounding Timothy McGee’s son still hanging over the team. But there’s another reason longtime viewers may suddenly feel like they’ve stepped back into the bullpen of the show’s earlier years.
Weatherly isn’t simply making a one-episode visit designed to give fans a little nostalgia. He’s returning for a season-long arc, bringing one of NCIS’ most popular characters back into the orbit of the team he once called family.
The NCIS Season 24 trailer picks up unfinished business with McGee
Before anybody gets too comfortable having Tony back in Washington, there’s a rather significant problem waiting for the team.
Season 23 ended with Nick Torres investigating some strange behavior involving McGee’s teenage son, Mateo.
Mateo had visited NCIS and appeared interested in a cyber internship, but things became considerably more suspicious when Torres couldn’t find the application Mateo supposedly filled out. When Torres confronted him, Mateo revealed that he was armed and warned that someone could be watching them.
Then came a gunshot.
The season ended without revealing who fired or who had been hit, leaving McGee’s newly developing relationship with his son at the center of one of the show’s biggest unanswered questions heading into NCIS Season 24.
The trailer confirms Torres is still very much part of the action, but it also suggests whatever is happening may extend well beyond one frightened teenager.
That’s where an old friend enters the picture.
Michael Weatherly’s Tony DiNozzo return is more than a cameo
Michael Weatherly spent the show’s first 13 seasons playing Tony DiNozzo, appearing in more than 300 episodes before departing as a series regular in 2016.
He briefly returned to NCIS in 2024 for the episode honoring Ducky Mallard and later reunited with Cote de Pablo for NCIS: Tony & Ziva.
Season 24, however, puts Tony back alongside the NCIS team for an extended story.
Tony’s return also has a logical explanation. Showrunner Steven D. Binder told TVLine that DiNozzo is opening a Washington, D.C., satellite office for his private security company, Salus Mondiale, while his daughter, Tali, attends boarding school in the United States.
Tony then hears that something is happening with NCIS, giving him a reason to reconnect with his former team.
The NCIS Season 24 preview doesn’t waste the opportunity to have a little fun with that history, either.
Tony announces that it’s a “new me” while interacting with McGee, an especially amusing statement for anybody who remembers years of DiNozzo tormenting “Probie” during the show’s earlier seasons.
But the trailer also makes clear Tony isn’t simply returning to walk around the old office and reminisce. Something has pulled him back into the NCIS world, giving Season 24 a chance to make DiNozzo an important part of the story rather than merely a familiar face.
Tony DiNozzo and McGee together again means a lot for longtime fans
Part of what makes Michael Weatherly’s return so appealing is the history between Tony and McGee.
When Sean Murray’s McGee first joined the team, DiNozzo never passed up an opportunity to remind him that he was the junior agent. The teasing, nicknames and constant “Probie” jokes became a major part of their relationship.
But underneath all of it was a friendship that grew for more than a decade.
A lot has changed since Tony left.
McGee isn’t the inexperienced agent trying to prove himself anymore. He’s now one of the team’s most experienced members, with a wife, children and years of cases behind him.
Putting these two characters together again gives NCIS an opportunity to revisit one of its most beloved relationships while showing just how much both men have changed.
And with McGee’s family potentially in danger, the Tony DiNozzo return may have considerably more emotional weight than a simple reunion.
NCIS Season 24 brings the show’s different eras together
Maybe that’s the most impressive part.
NCIS premiered in 2003.
Since then, Gibbs left. Ziva left. Tony left. Abby left. Ducky is gone. New agents arrived, relationships changed and Gary Cole’s Alden Parker eventually became the man leading the team.
Yet somehow, the doors at NCIS keep opening.
The series celebrated its 500th episode during Season 23, an almost unthinkable milestone for a primetime drama.
NCIS Season 24 gets to take advantage of all that history.
Longtime viewers get Tony and McGee together again. Newer viewers still have Parker, Torres, Knight, Palmer and Kasie. And instead of pretending the previous 23 seasons never happened, NCIS can bring those different eras together.
That’s part of why Michael Weatherly’s NCIS comeback feels bigger than another guest appearance.
Tony DiNozzo helped define what NCIS was during its earliest and most successful years. Seeing him walk back into this very different version of the team creates a bridge between the show longtime fans fell in love with and the series that is somehow still going strong more than two decades later.
After all these years, DiNozzo walking back into NCIS still feels like an event.
And judging by the NCIS Season 24 trailer, he’s picked a pretty interesting time to come home.
NCIS Season 24 premieres Tuesday, October 6 on CBS and will also be available to stream on Paramount+.
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