The NCIS spinoff departing the NCIS franchise in season 19, it was announced that a prequel spinoff entitled NCIS: Origins would bring Harmon back as a narrator, with the story set in 1991 and chronicling the agent's early years before the mainline show.

Paramount has brought word that Austin Stowell will star in NCIS: Origins as the younger version of Gibbs. Stowell has starred in a slew of television shows and movies, most notably Catch-22, the recent Fantasy Island horror remake, and Swallow. More recently, Stowell was also seen in Peacock's true-story-based thriller show A Friend of the Family.

What Stowell's Casting Means For NCIS: Origins

With Stowell taking on the role of Gibbs for the NCIS prequel, he marks the fourth actor to play the character in the long-running franchise. During Harmon's tenure on the mainline show, a younger version of the character was seen in various flashbacks, with Micah Tayloe Owens playing Gibbs as a child, while Sean Harmon, Mark's son, played him as a young adult. While Sean is being replaced by Stowell for the part, both Harmons are still attached as executive producers on the show, with the elder Harmon also attached to narrate.

In casting Stowell as Gibbs, NCIS: Origins could very well be aiming for a more action-oriented approach than the mainline show. In many of his prior roles, namely the Chris Hemsworth-led military action movie 12 Strong, Stowell has shown off a bigger build than either Harmon in the show's past. With Gibbs also in his younger years of being an agent, Origins could find him being a more reckless version of the character audiences know and love, particularly as the show's 1991 setting puts it right after the murder of Gibbs' first wife and daughter.

This, in turn, would make NCIS: Origins all the more prevalent as his mentoring of Gibbs puts him on the path towards his days on the mainline show. Though Franks exhibited many reckless actions both during and after his retirement from the agency, it seems more likely that he would strive for Gibbs to not take after him, but instead learn the challenges of NCIS' legal relationships and how best to rise through the ranks and do right in the world.

All previous and current seasons of NCIS are available to stream on Paramount+ and Netflix.

Source: Paramount