Who does Jimmy end up with on NCIS? Season 23 just rewrote the answer fans were betting on
Who does Jimmy Palmer end up with on NCIS? Season 23's "Stolen Moments" sets up a Palmer–Knight–Torres love triangle, complete with a new Gibbs rule and a nosy AI named DAWN.
For two seasons, the NCIS fandom has operated on one article of faith: Jimmy Palmer and Jessica Knight, television's most functional adult couple until the season 21 finale ruined everything, would obviously get back together. It was a lock. People planned around it emotionally.
Season 23 looked at that lock and said: what if triangle?
A brief history of the wreckage
Palmer and Knight split when she was offered her dream job at Camp Pendleton and he, a man allergic to long distance after a lifetime of losing people, pulled the plug. She came back to the team in season 22. They did not reunite. They just... orbited, tragically, while everyone watched.
Enter Torres, because of course
Season 23 started dropping hints with the subtlety of a dropped autopsy tray. In episode 3, Knight essentially confessed to caring about Nick Torres — the man who, reminder, dated her sister last season — and star Wilmer Valderrama poured gasoline on it, telling fans there was something "happening underneath" and that Nick's arc this season is deliberately stitched together.
Meanwhile, showrunner Steven D. Binder was busy warning that Knight's shiny new NCIS Elite gig would go badly:
Binder said it would "blow up in her face in a really emotionally charged way."
Great. Wonderful. Everyone's thriving.
"Stolen Moments," or: an AI ruins Jimmy's life
Then came the December episode "Stolen Moments" — co-written by Brian Dietzen himself, a man who apparently enjoys hurting his own character. The team gets an AI assistant, DAWN, who analyzes Jimmy's life, finds it lonely, and mid-episode lets him eavesdrop on Jess and Nick in the car, where he hears her talking about a date with someone else. The episode even mints a brand-new Gibbs rule for the occasion:
By the end, Jimmy finally decides to go win Jess back — walks over, heart in hand — and sees her with Torres. And stops.
"I think that he definitely wanted to go talk," Dietzen told TV Insider, calling the moment a blind spot Palmer never saw coming.
So who does he end up with?
As of right now: nobody, which is the twist. The sure-thing reunion is officially a three-person situation with a jealous medical examiner, an oblivious field agent, and an AI with boundary issues. Place your new bets accordingly.