After a Super Bowl ad announcing her return (a commercial so popular that Vanity Fair picked it up), Cote de Pablo briefly reprised her NCIS role during its 2019 season. When she did, she told ET, "I hoped that at some point something like this could happen," suggesting that she'd asked CBS to "give [her] a really good reason to come back."
As executive producer Frank Cardea told USA Today, the path to De Pablo heading back to NCIS was facilitated by a "clandestine meeting" with himself, fellow EP Steven Binder, and the show's longtime lead actor, Mark Harmon (a.k.a. Leroy Jethro Gibbs). The news outlet reports that the actress' appearance back on set was "shrouded in secrecy," and included only a "bare-bones" team and a late-night filming. De Pablo said that being back "felt like just slipping back into a really comfortable slipper."
However, de Pablo then released this bombshell in relation to her 2013 exit: "I'm not ready to talk about that yet. I will someday. But I didn't leave because I wanted to go or because I was ready or because I was tired. I didn't really have an option." While it doesn't look like Ziva will appear in NCIS' upcoming Season 18, executive producer Gina Lucita Monreal told Parade in October 2020, "If there's more story to tell, I'm the first to jump on board." So, all hope is not lost.
