{"id":544021,"date":"2026-03-25T08:48:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T08:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/544021\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T08:48:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T08:48:08","slug":"ncis-shocker-as-veteran-cast-member-exits-in-series-500th-episode","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/544021\/","title":{"rendered":"‘NCIS’ Shocker As Veteran Cast Member Exits In Series’ 500th Episode"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT: This post contains details about the NCIS<\/a> 500th episode that aired on Tuesday, March 24.<\/p>\n

\n\tNCIS\u00a0celebrated a milestone on CBS<\/a>, airing its 500th episode, and it killed off one of the beloved characters from the long-running military police procedural.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe latest episode of the series saw Rocky Carroll<\/a>\u2018s Director Leon Vance defend the NCIS team as the agency was shut down by the Department of Defense. Leon was able to restore NCIS, but the twist that shocked viewers was when he was shot to death by a corrupt agent.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn an interview with TVLine<\/a>, Carroll clarified that he \u201cwas not the catalyst for this happening,\u201d adding, \u201cI also don\u2019t think at the beginning of the season that it was planned.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCarroll joined the show in Season 5 in a recurring role before getting bumped to series regular in Season 6. The actor noted that the episode was shot at the end of November and beginning of December, and he found out his character was dying \u201ctwo episodes before we shot it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe idea to kill off Director Vance came from executive producer Steven D. Binder, who ran the idea by Carroll, telling him they wanted to send \u201cshockwaves through the TV community and the fan base\u201d with the landmark episode.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Rocky<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tRocky Carroll as NCIS Director Leon Vance <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRobert Voets\/CBS<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom a viewer\u2019s perspective, Carroll quickly said it was \u201ca great story,\u201d but said that \u201cThe only thing that surprised me more than being told what the story was and how it was going to impact my character was how quickly I was able to kind of come to terms with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCarroll had been playing the character for 18 seasons and never imagined he would be on the show for as long as he was.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI would have loved to have been one of the characters who was there for the very last episode, when they board up the windows, and when they officially do say, \u2018All right, it\u2019s time for everybody to turn off the lights and go home.\u2019 You\u2019d like to be one of the last men standing,\u201d he added. \u201cBut after 18 seasons, I couldn\u2019t have asked for more.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCarroll said that he felt his \u201ccharacter really kind of came full circle,\u201d and according to Binder, the 500th episode was \u201ca tribute and a love letter\u201d to his character, which will now live in TV history.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Rocky<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tRocky Carroll as NCIS Director Leon Vance <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRobert Voets\/CBS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT: This post contains details about the NCIS 500th episode that aired on Tuesday, March 24. NCIS\u00a0celebrated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[991,88,34865,242722,92],"class_list":["post-544021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-cbs","tag-entertainment","tag-ncis","tag-rocky-carroll","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}