Michael Weatherly said he will return to NCIS for Season 24 next fall, bringing Tony DiNozzo back into the franchise after years away from the main series. The 58-year-old made the update while talking about how he is approaching the character’s return.
That is why Ncis Season 24 Cast News is drawing attention now: fans of Tony DiNozzo are looking for what his return means for the long-running show, and for how it connects to Tony & Ziva, which was released on DVD Tuesday. Weatherly said the new run will not simply replay the old version of Tony. He said he hopes viewers recognize the character they knew while also seeing that he has evolved.
Weatherly and Cote de Pablo were last seen together on Season 11 of NCIS, after de Pablo left the show in 2011. Weatherly exited in Season 13 three years later, and since then the franchise has carried on without one of its most familiar original faces. His return next fall restores part of that early-era chemistry at a moment when interest in the Tony and Ziva story is already running high.
He described the update at New York Comic Con, saying the fan expectation shaped the way he thought about the role. Tony, he said, once relied on jokes, movie references and other defense mechanisms to keep people at a distance. Over time, fatherhood changed that. Weatherly said Tony learned patience from raising Tali and putting himself second, even as he wrestled with the influence of Gibbs, whom he described as a damaged father figure who was better at teaching him how to solve a crime than how to love.
That leaves one detail still hanging: which Season 24 episode Weatherly will appear in has not been stated. But the larger point is already clear. Tony DiNozzo is coming back next fall, and Weatherly wants the old character to be recognizable without pretending time passed unchanged.
