With NCIS currently airing its 22nd season on the 2024 TV schedule, this is a show that’s been around for so long that many of its important characters, whether we’re talking from the main cast or those who recurred, have long been absent. In the latter category, Muse Watson, who played Mike Franks, Leroy Jethro Gibbs’ mentor, appeared in 20 episodes across the CBS show’s third to fifteenth seasons. However, those later appearances were Franks in ghost form, as he met his end towards the end of Season 8. Jesse Stern, the writer who killed Franks off, reflected about how right before he was told to take character off the board right before, which happened right before he left NCIS.
Jesse Stern worked on NCIS from 2004 to 2011, writing 33 episodes over that stretch of time, as well as being promoted to various producer positions. He talked about this chapter of his professional life on Off Duty: An NCIS Rewatch with hosts Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo, who respectively play Tony DiNozzo and Ziva David in the NCIS-verse. When Weatherly brought up Stern’s penchant for killing off important NCIS characters and specifically mentioned Mike Franks’ death scene, leading Stern to say:
Oh my God, that was one of those ones. Gary Glasberg, rest in peace, handed me that assignment. He said, We’re going to kill Mike Franks.’ And Franks hadn't been in an episode that season. And I was just like, ‘Are you kidding? We're going to bring the guy in just to kill him off.’ I'm like, ‘Everyone's going to see it coming. It's not the way to do it.’ So I tried to talk him out of that decision, but he was determined that we were going to kill Mike Franks. So I was like, ‘Ok, well, if I'm going to do it…’ That was my last script. I was like, ‘If I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it in a swan song.’ I’m going to do it in a way you don't see coming and I'm going to do it in a way where the actor can come back.
Following his appearance in the NCIS Season 8 premiere, which was tied to his involvement in the Season 7 finale, Mike Franks returned in Season 8’s penultimate episode, “Swan Song”. While stepping outside of Gibbs’ house in the middle of a rainy night, Franks noticed recurring antagonist Jonas Cobb, a.k.a. the Port-to-Port Killer, out in the street and attempted to apprehend him, but was fatally stabbed. Franks got a full military funeral in the Season 8 finale (which was the last episode Stern worked on), and it was also revealed in that episode that he was already dying of cancer, hence why Gibbs was building him a coffin.
While Jesse Stern initially wasn’t on board with killing off Mike Franks when the late Gary Glasberg instructed him to do so, he ended up making the best of the situation and delivered what I consider to be one of the best death scenes in NCIS. The good news is that, as mentioned earlier, this didn’t mark the end of Muse Watson’s involvement with the show, as Gibbs would occasionally see his deceased friend in ghost form. Watson last appeared as Franks in the Season 15 episode “Voices”.
Although the older Mike Franks’ time on NCIS has long since concluded, the younger version is currently being played by Kyle Schmid on NCIS: Origins, which airs Mondays at 10 pm ET on CBS after new episodes of NCIS. Stream both shows, and the rest of the NCIS franchise, with your Paramount+ subscription.