According to Cote de Pablo in “Off Duty: An NCIS Rewatch,” Leroy Jethro Gibbs doesn’t lock his door in NCIS because he’s lost what mattered most to him when his wife and daughter were killed. The new NCIS prequel series, “NCIS: Origins,” will delve deeper into Gibbs’ past, potentially adding even more depth to this trait. Based on the timeline, “NCIS: Origins” will start around the time when Gibbs lost his family after they were brutally murdered.
For nearly two decades, Mark Harmon’s character was the fearless leader of DC’s Major Case Response Team (MCRT). Known for his leadership style rooted in loyalty and fairness, NCIS also highlighted certain quirks of Gibbs, including his habit of leaving his front door unlocked—a seemingly dangerous habit for a law enforcer. Gibbs left NCIS in season 19, leaving this oddity unexplained.
Nearly three years after Harmon departed from the show, this mystery is finally clarified in a new episode of “Off Duty: An NCIS Rewatch” podcast. In the show’s trivia segment, Ziva David first asks her co-host, Michael Weatherly, and guest of the week, Sean Murray, about the matter, but they couldn’t answer. In the end, she reveals the official reason is tied to Gibbs’ heartbreaking past of losing his family. The answer is because he has already lost what was most important to him, so he actually doesn’t care.