Watching all 1,000+ episodes of the NCIS franchise takes over 715 hours or about 29-30 days non-stop. Catching up with just the main NCIS series requires 13 days, excluding the spinoffs. Watching NCIS at a realistic pace of one hour per day would take nearly two years, including spinoffs. While binge-watching an entire series can typically be done in a few long nights or weekends, experiencing the entire NCIS franchise is a much bigger commitment.
The original NCIS series, which began in 2003, has 21 seasons and celebrated the 1,000th episode of the franchise in its latest season. The franchise includes NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles, NCIS: New Orleans, NCIS: Hawai’i, and NCIS: Sydney, making it a serious investment of time to watch them all.
With the introduction of two new series, NCIS: Origins and NCIS: Tony & Ziva, the franchise will expand even further, adding more episodes and telling the stories of core Major Case Response Team members like Jethro Gibbs, Ziva David (Cote de Pablo), and Anthony DiNozzo (Michael Weatherly). The main series alone had released 467 episodes by the time NCIS Season 22 started.
To binge-watch the entire NCIS universe, you would need 42,936 minutes and 47 seconds—over 715 hours or between 29 and 30 days. To marathon NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles, NCIS: New Orleans, NCIS: Hawai’i, and NCIS: Sydney without any breaks, you would need to watch for a whole month straight. A good starting point could be NCIS: Sydney, which can be comfortably watched in a day or so.
Catching up with the Washington D.C. team alone would take 335 hours or about 13 days. Watching from NCIS Season 1, Episode 1, “Yankee White,” to the NCIS Season 21 finale would require about two uninterrupted weeks. While exploring the NCIS universe is exciting, there’s only so much time in a day.