It’s been 12 years since Tony DiNozzo and Ziva David were last onscreen together, but the latter was definitely excited to reunite with the former during her final appearance in NCIS Season 17. Well, the first NCIS: Tony & Ziva trailer revealed Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo’s characters are not romantically together when the spinoff begins. That surely won't enough to detract Tiva fans (and hooked newcomers) from watching Tony & Ziva when it premieres on the 2025 TV schedule, CinemaBlend did learn from showrunner John McNamara why he never wanted to have the title protagonists in a committed relationship right off the bat.
During my recent interview with McNamara, whose other TV credits include The Magicians and Physical, I asked him if there was ever an incarnation of the upcoming NCIS: Tony & Ziva where the characters were together from the start, thus finally bringing an end to the ‘will they, won’t they’ dynamic from the NCIS days. He told me:
No, to be honest, because I just didn't see enough conflict in that. What I wanted to play with structurally is if people have great respect for each other, they're tied together by a daughter, they're on and off again, but they were this far apart, hopefully the action, the suspense, the espionage thriller, the chase, are all ways to bring them back together and strip them of a lot of their more neurotic worries that have kept them apart.
Tony and Ziva are still in each other’s lives in Paris, France since they’re co-parenting their daughter Tali, but for drama’s sake, it was important for John McNamara that NCIS: Tony & Ziva not show them having already achieved that happily ever after. Since Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo are also executive producers on the series, they must have agreed with this decision. However, the events that unfold in this NCIS spinoff maybe just enough to finally bring them back together romantically, which McNamara’s comment to me seemingly indicates.
It’s worth noting that Cote de Pablo only agreed to do NCIS: Tony & Ziva if it ended with the two getting “some sort of happy something,” though she also acknowledged that this would need to be earned. John McNamara also named three classic movies to me that have the same kind of formula with its male and female leads that Tony & Ziva is now utilizing for it story. In his words:
So I thought starting them apart and then having the action at least draw them together physically so they have to be together all the time. I didn't invent the wheel. This is The 39 Steps. This is North by Northwest. This is Three Days of the Condor. Those classic movies are all about pairing people who don't want to be together, but they'll die without each other.
Yeah, I’d say the odds of Tony and Ziva finally getting that happy ending nearly 20 years after they met early in NCIS Season 3 are pretty strong. But of course, we won’t know for sure until the events in this corner of the NCIS-verse start unfolding in the weeks ahead. Weatherly and de Pablo castmates in the spinoff include Isla Gie, Amita Suman, Lara Rossi, Maximillian Osinski, Julian Ovenden and James D’Arcy.
NCIS: Tony & Ziva debuts its first three episodes on Thursday, September 4 on Paramount+. Although the show is currently only envisioned as a 10-episode miniseries, more seasons being ordered are reportedly possible depending on the first season’s level of success.
