Tony DiNozzo and Ziva David got their happy ending. Or, happy beginning? And this was always the plan, according to showrunner John McNamara. “I knew we were going to have a happy ending,” he told us as he sat down to break down the finale with Fangirlish. And what a happy ending it was. The one that feels earned, the one that feels like closure… and yet, the kind that leaves the door open for more.
Because that moment of getting together, and the progress they’ve made, doesn’t mean they’re magically healed. Life doesn’t work like that. And let’s be clear, McNamara has plans for more. “Being in a couple is not a static thing. You have two or three really good days and something happens, and you have some bad days,” he said, as we discussed what could come next. “And I think that they’re going to have some bad days as a couple.”
But they’re going to face that together.
Running out of ideas? Not at all. Not for Tony and Ziva, not for the team, and not for Tali. “I think there’s a lot. I don’t want to jinx it because we have not been picked up for season two. So, season two is just hypothetical,” McNamara shared. “But I definitely see a world in which Tali and Sophie may get into a little mischief,” among other things.
Because the finale does set up a lot. There’s Boris, for example. And Boris is the kind of character that was not part of the original team, but that we felt we couldn’t lose for a possible Season 2. He’s our McGee, in a way! Tony even said so. “No, no, don’t worry. Don’t worry. We have contracts with Boris, Claudette, Sophie, Tali, and Martine.” McNamara shared, to soothe our worries. “I mean, we have them under option. And they’re all great. They’re all fantastic.”
And they really work with the story the show wanted to tell. “I’m kind of a huge believer in like, when you’re telling a kind of a large-scale romantic story, it’s really fun to have other couples,” McNamara told us. “It started with Martine and Jonah. I remember even saying to Michael at one point, because he and I are like Bond lunatics. We love James Bond. And I was rereading Fleming, and I said, you know, I just noticed it’s only taken me like 50 years. Every Bond villain, dark mirror of Bond, every single one in some way or another. And I said: What we need to have in the show is a dark mirror couple, because we’re telling a love story.”
“Then that just made it feel natural to have Boris and Fruzsi, and then Claudette and Sophie, you know, and then Martine and Jonah. So, it’s been kind of like interesting explorations of other kinds of love, and other kinds of affection, and other kinds of friction. Like, Boris and Claudette don’t start out liking each other. That’s so fun about their journey.”
‘Full Circle’ gives some characters a different dimension. Like Sophie, who starts the episode apologizing to Ziva, thinking that she’s failed her. “Her entire job is to keep Kali safe. And for five years, it’s been not so hard,” McNamara explained. “And all of a sudden, it gets really hard.” So, Sophie has to grapple with that, and it’s a nice exploration also for a possible Season 2.
Martine, meanwhile, ends up in a very privileged position. She definitely “gets off easy.” But we wouldn’t have wanted to lose her. And McNamara agreed. “I think that ensembles are more interesting if at least one character is ambiguous, and kind of a chaos agent. And it can kind of be bad one day and good the next. And are they being good for being good, or are they being good of self-interest? Is there an underlying motive? I think she’s an interesting character in that sense.”
All in all, the show has built the thing the NCIS franchise is known for: family. “That was something that Michael said to me really early on, and we were just talking about the story. He said: You know that ultimately, this show is about family. And he said, in the case of our show, we have a literal family, a mother, a father, and a daughter, and then we’re going to have a found family. The best of both worlds, hopefully. And I think we did.”
But the show also gave us one of the most satisfying love stories we’ve seen on TV in a while, one that ended with a beautiful montage dedicated to the characters. And McNamara told us that wasn’t even supposed to be the ending!
“I will let you in on a secret. There was a completely different ending. There was always a scene in the apartment with a photograph of Henry and Tali. But after that scene, there was a sequence of four or five scenes that were really exciting, really dark, really cliffhanger-ish. And we wrote it, shot it over two nights in Budapest. And I looked at it, and I just said, this is the wrong feeling to me.”
“So, I was talking to the editor, Josh Beal, who cut the 9 and 10. Wonderful, wonderful editor. And I said: How do we make this moment in the apartment feel more like kind of an ending? Like the music coming to a rest? And he said: Give me a couple of hours. So, we put together this montage for Henry. And I loved it. I sent it to the studio. And the current executive on the show, Stephanie Groves, said, “Too much Henry, could also be them.” So, I thought that was a really good idea.”
The best things sometimes come from collaboration. “I said to Josh, let’s do two montages. One of just Henry, and then come back to the present, and then do them. And I mean, it was done in a day. Not scripted. It was all Josh in the studio, having really good ideas. And I still think that that decision to cut that sort of dark ending, and possibly use it if there’s a season two, I think that was the right thing.” McNamara told us. “I just think the audience deserves a little happiness. They’ve been through a lot. They deserve a break.”
We (and I count myself with the audience) really, really do.
But the moment with Henry’s picture is also a beautiful moment for Tony and Ziva, a moment of growth. And one that wasn’t originally in the cards. “Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret. That was not in the first couple of drafts of the script. My co-writer and I were working on figuring out how to get off the island, all the usual stuff. That seemed to be about Tony and Ziva, but I felt like there was something missing.”
The tears that we shed at the picture of Henry, maybe? “And I had this idea, and I went to the director, Dennis Smith, who’s a wonderful guy, and I’ve known him for a long time. It was the first time we worked together. And I pitched him the scene, and he started to tear up, started to cry. I’m like, are you crying? He goes, yes. I go, why? He goes, it’s very moving. I said, Okay, let’s do it.”
Confession: I cried, too. But then, I laughed. And rejoiced at the ending. At the show we got. The way it came together. Hopefully, this is not a happy ending, but a happy beginning.
MORE: Check out our previous reviews! Here’s Episodes 1-3, here’s Episode 4, here’s Episode 5, here’s Episode 6, here’s Episode 7, here’s Episode 8, and here’s Episode 9.
NCIS: Tony & Ziva Season 1 is available to stream on Paramount+.
