Where’s Randy in the Present? ‘NCIS: Origins’ Star Caleb Foote Shares His — and Brian Dietzen’s — Ideas

The NCIS franchise expanded last year to include the prequel, Origins, and in doing so, it began exploring the pasts of several characters we’d already met in the present. The series follows Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Austin Stowell in the prequel, Mark Harmon on the mothership), as a probie on Mike Franks’ (Kyle Schmid, Muse Watson) team, and Vera Strickland (Diany Rodriguez, Roma Maffia) works out of the same office. In the recent crossover, Bobby Moynihan and Ely Henry played older versions of Woody and Phil, so we know they live to 2025. There’s a mystery surrounding Lala (Mariel Molino), so we don’t expect to see her in the present. But what about Randy? We asked Caleb Foote for his theory about his character.

“This is something that my parents can’t let go either,” Foote tells TV Insider with a laugh. “My parents are always just trying to pitch ideas to have an old Randy come back in the mothership.”

As for his own ideas? “I think Randy — this is all just pure speculation — exists in the future. I think Randy is an implemental part in Gibbs’s upbringing as an amazing prolific special agent, and I think we have the best showrunners [David J. North and Gina Lucita Monreal on Origins, Steven D. Binder on NCIS] in the biz. I think they’re going to find a creative reason for the OG team to not have interacted with Randy up until this point, but your guess is as good as mine,” Foote admits.

“I’m half hoping that Randy’s in that cabin in Alaska and him, Lala, and Gibbs, they’re all drinking hot cocoa and riding a dog sled around,” he continues. “That’s my dream. I’m ice fishing with Gibbs and then we cast Will Ferrell to play an old Randy, something perfect.”

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So, no, he wouldn’t want to be aged up with makeup like Moynihan and Henry (“It was the perfect scene,” Foote raves about their appearances in the crossover). “I think they should find someone,” says Foote.

He also shared “a really good idea” that Brian Dietzen, who plays Dr. Jimmy Palmer on NCIS, came up with, to “introduce an old Randy in the mothership, but he should be missing an arm. And so then you just raise all of these questions and then throughout every single episode and season of NCIS: Origins, you’re like, when’s he going to lose the arm? When’s he going to lose the arm?”

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Foote also thinks that Randy talking about a desk job in Season 1 could play into why we have yet to see or hear about him in the present-day.

“When we shot the finale and they were talking about Wheeler’s [Patrick Fischler] replacement, we actually shot it and it didn’t really make the final cut, but the SAC came in, he was like, ‘I need someone. I need someone with experience and I need someone who wants to do it.’ It was actually scripted that they were showing Franks and Randy,” he reveals. “I feel as if that could be a pretty good trajectory for Randy. This would be seasons down the line, but he would be taking up some kind of a leadership position and then you could make it a classified leader leadership position — it is the Navy — and maybe that’s why you just never hear from old Rando again.”

What do you think the future holds for Randy? Let us know in the comments section below.

NCIS: Origins, Tuesdays, 9/8c, CBS

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