By Ryan DeVault
NCIS featured Agent Ellie Bishop for 172 episodes of the show, but her character arc came to an end with the Season 18 finale.
For much of the episode, Bishop was in the crosshairs as it seemed like she was being framed for an NSA file that had been leaked.
It wasn’t until later that Bishop admitted to leaking the file as she began burning bridges with other people at NCIS.
When the smoke had cleared, actress Emily Wickersham had left NCIS and the character Special Agent Eleanor “Ellie” Bishop was gone for good. Or is she?
Why did Ellie Bishop leave NCIS?
Within the show itself, the character of Ellie Bishop left NCIS so that she could go to work on a secret mission. Odette Malone, the woman who had been watching over Ziva David’s shed, had been in the process of training Bishop to take on a mission for which she needed to be a disgraced agent.
It looks like Bishop had been training for years to get to this point, improving her skills in order to go to Syria to help with refugees who had been used wrongly by the NSA. It certainly left the character with an open-ended story, providing some room for Bishop to pop up again before the series comes to a close.
We would be theorizing more about what NCIS Season 19 holds for Bishop if actress Emily Wickersham hadn’t stated that she was done with the show. She is moving on to other things, and it looks like she is closing the door on the NCIS chapter of her career.
Below is the final scene that Bishop shared with Agent Nick Torres, showing that there might have been some more stuff taking place off-screen between the pair that we never got to witness.
NCIS fans want a Bishop and Ziva team up
NCIS was renewed for Season 19 by CBS, but there are a lot of questions about what’s going to happen on the show. Who will replace Agent Bishop? How many episodes will Gibbs appear on? And how are fans going to handle NCIS airing on a new night?
then there are those fans who would love to see Ellie Bishop and Ziva David sharing some scenes together as they track down bad guys on international missions. It would certainly be fun to see what they could do on the screen together, as NCIS fans were mostly teased when Cote de Pablo returned for a few episodes last year.
The reality is that we are likely looking at a new actress taking over the episodes and the role that Bishop had for years. We may have already seen who that person is going to be in Season 19, as Agent Jessica Knight has an option to star in more episodes of the show.
For now, Ellie Bishop is gone from NCIS and we will all have to tune in this fall to see what direction the show takes next.
NCIS returns in Fall 2021 on CBS.
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