‘NCIS’ Fans Are Ecstatic About Bishop’s Shocking Return

NCIS fans got quite the holiday treat in the December 16 fall finale: the return of a fan-favorite character. But Ellie Bishop (Emily Wickersham) has changed, and she’s on the other side of the team … maybe. It’s still unclear exactly what’s going on.

The episode saw Knight (Katrina Law) receive her first NCIS: Elite assignment, and her target is Bishop. As Vance (Rocky Carroll) told her, it hit close to home and she’d be getting more details, but until then, it had to stay between them — including from Knight’s partner and Bishop’s former love interest, Torres (Wilmer Valderrama). And what Knight didn’t know was that Bishop was watching the team at that moment.

Immediately following the episode, NCIS fans expressed their surprise and excitement for the returning Bishop. Emily Wickersham was last seen onscreen in the Season 18 finale, when she left NCIS as a disgraced agent for the mission she was undertaking.

“Woah! Caught me off guard,” one fan wrote to kick off a thread on Reddit.

“Yessss!!!! I kept telling myself not to get my hopes up and for the first time in a while I am not disappointed!!!” another wrote in the comments. “Well done to the writers for giving a great twist!”

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That was a sentiment shared across the board, with others writing, “I squealed like a kid on Christmas morning,” “I have almost never been happier when it comes to NCIS and it usually takes much longer to get answers on what happens to characters after they leave,” “I gasped like a book character in surprise, honestly was unexpected a bit since being away for so long period of time it was like a shot in the dark,” and “Best news ever?” as well as “OMG MY FAVORITE IS BACK!!” and “I am SO HAPPY!!!! Cannot wait!”

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One viewer was puzzled about Bishop now being a target of NCIS Elite, given, “Wasn’t Ellie being some kinda traitor supposed to some kinda of deep cover?” Another suggested, “She could have gone native and actually turned dark. Or could be getting framed, which I think is more likely. I’m just so happy to see her back in some capacity. The way her story ended was awful and I want them to fix it somehow!”

TV Insider spoke with executive producer Steven D. Binder about bringing Wickersham back as Bishop, and he teased that “she’s not being targeted … because she’s been a good person.”

He continued, “All of her relationships are going to be colored, all of her feelings are going to be colored by who she is now and not who she was. Who she was if she was gone for five years, she’d come back and maybe there would be one conversation, but now she’s Bishop 2.0 and also it wouldn’t be interesting to bring her back and she hasn’t moved anywhere. It just wouldn’t be a good drama. And people move on with their life. People change, especially in the world that she’s in now. It’s a very high-stakes, high-pressure situation. People break, people’s loyalty shift, people’s priorities shift. And so when she comes back, her relationships with her old friends are very much — at least what it appears is that she’s not the person who we remember.”

What are you hoping to see from Bishop when NCIS returns in February? Let us know in the comments section below.

NCIS, Midseason Return, Tuesday, February 24, 2026, 8/7c, CBS

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