If you’ve been a longtime NCIS viewer, or if you’ve been catching up in the show with your Paramount+ subscription, you may remember actor Matt Jones for playing Ned Dorneget, a probationary agent who was introduced in the Season 9 episode “Sins of the Father” and became a full-fledged agent by Season 12’s “Troll.” Sadly, Ned died just one episode later, although this was a request that Jones made so that he could star opposite Anna Faris and Allison Janney in the sitcom Mom. However, looking back, Jones regrets making said request, which is kind of hilarious.
During his conversation with fellow NCIS alums Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo on their podcast Off Duty: An NCIS Rewatch, Matt Jones recounted how during the period where he was making occasional appearances as Ned Dorneget, he was also starring in pilots for various TV networks that didn’t get picked up. As such, these guest-starring roles were necessary for him to pay the bills, with another notable example of this being his 12-episode Breaking Bad stint as Badger. Then Mom, which can be streamed with a Hulu subscription, was picked up, giving Jones his biggest small screen gig yet. As the actor told Weatherly and de Pablo:
And so I ran into [then-showrunner] Gary Glasberg at a CBS event. I think I was literally standing with Emily Wickersham and Brian Dietzen at the Upfronts because I was hanging out with the NCIS people because everybody on CBS back in the day used to go to a party together. It was so much fun, and I was hanging out, and Gary came over and he's like, ‘Oh, you got to come back.’ And I was like, ‘I’m on this sitcom now. I can't come back. I want to, but what do we do?’ And he was like, I don't know, what do you want to do?’ I was like, ‘Kill me!’ I was like, ‘Let's kill me!’ And he's like, ‘Oh my God, yeah, we should kill you.’ So it was my idea to die on the show. Such a stupid idea, by the way.
Matt Jones appeared in six episode of NCIS across Season 9, 10 and 12, and if Gary Glasberg, who passed away in 2016, had had his way, Ned Dorneget would have continued popping up. But because Jones was preparing to do Mom, he felt at the time that it was necessary to make sure Ned could never be brought back. So in “The Lost Boys,” Season 12’s penultimate episode, Ned died in an explosion triggered by Daniel Budd, the leader of the terrorist group known as The Calling. Mark Harmon’s Leroy Jethro Gibbs Gibbs later saw Dorneget alongside the ghosts of other deceased NCIS colleagues from his life (Paula Cassidy, Mike Franks, Kate Todd, Jenny Shepard and Christopher Pacci).
While joining Mom was obviously a major win for Jones’ career, as you can see from that last sentence in the above quote, he regrets permanently closing the door on Ned Dorneget. With NCIS running its 22nd season on the 2024 TV schedule, and Mom having concluded its eight-season run in 2021 (Jones didn’t appear in the final two seasons), the character could have easily returned by this point and reunited with characters like Sean Murray’s Timothy McGee, Brian Dietzen’s Jimmy Palmer and Rocky Carroll’s Leon Vance.
However, when Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo said they would have liked for him to have come along with them to Hungary to shoot their upcoming spinoff, NCIS: Tony & Ziva, Matt Jones mentioned how since he “nothing” like he used to, perhaps he could still return to the franchise as a new character. He also mused about reprising Ned as a ghost again (which de Pablo would like to do with Ziva’s half-brother Ari Haswari). So even though Ned’s story among the living has long since concluded, maybe there’s hope for him to one day get involved with this procedural universe again in a different capacity.
If that ends up happening, CinemaBlend will let you know about it. Until then, catch new episodes of NCIS Mondays at 9 PM ET, and NCIS: Tony & Ziva will premiere exclusively on Paramount+ sometime on the 2025 TV schedule.