NCIS: Origins Season 2 premieres on the 2025 TV schedule in October, sandwiched between NCIS Season 23 and NCIS: Sydney Season 3 on CBS. The prequel show’s cast and crew, however, are already back in the swing of things, as Season 2 has begun filming. What’s caught my eye at the start of this production, however, is that there’s already a major update to share about Mariel Molino’s character, Lala Dominguez.
Lala crashed her car in the NCIS: Origins Season 1 finale to avoid hitting a little girl who’d run out into the street, and it was left ambiguous whether or not she survived. Well, fans can take comfort knowing they’ll at least get to see Lala at the start of Season 2. That’s because Molino shared a picture on her Instagram Stories of the area of the Paramount lot where Origins filmed, with a special canine friend of hers in frame:
Kyle Schmid, who plays Mike Franks on NCIS: Origins, took a video of that same area of the lot, albeit at night, and shared it to his own Instagram Stories. So for those of you who were worried that Lala Dominguez wouldn’t appear in Origins’ next season at all, those worries can now be squashed. The question now is, how exactly will we see her?
The first and most logical answer is that Lala survived the car crash. From there, it can be inferred that the NCIS: Origins Season 2 premiere will either pick up immediately where the Season 1 finale left off and show her in the hospital, or it will begin several months later as she’s still recovering. But there are a couple holes in that idea.
As Mark Harmon’s older Leroy Jethro Gibbs narrated in the Origins series premiere, this story he’s telling in the prequel is about Lala, and it’s not a story he’s felt comfortable telling until now. It makes sense he’d feel that way if she died, but if she lived and went on to work with Gibbs for several more years, then why would he feel that way about her? Also, if Lala made it through the car crash, why wouldn’t she have told Gibbs right away about how he got Lara Macy to stop going after him? He didn’t learn that information until the late 2000s, as seen in NCIS Season 6.
That leaves the other option: Lala died in the car crash, and she’ll be present in the Season 2 premiere as either a ghost Austin Stowell’s Gibbs sees or through flashbacks. If NCIS: Origins goes this route, it’d be reminiscent of how NCIS killed off Sasha Alexander’s Caitlin Todd in its Season 2 finale, then brought her back one more time in various visions the other characters saw of her. However, if Mariel Molino continues to post behind-the-scenes Origins pictures and videos in the coming weeks, we can rule this option out.
Lala Dominguez’s fate will be fully revealed when NCIS: Origins Season 2 premieres on CBS October 14 at 9 p.m. ET. Season 2 will also see Mike Franks reuniting with his brother, continue following along with Cliff Wheeler and show Gibbs’ first interrogation.
