Why did Ellie Bishop leave NCIS? Emily Wickersham walked away — and a month later life handed her a bigger reason
Ellie Bishop vanished from NCIS in a 2021 finale built around a leak, a firing and an undercover job. Here's how the show wrote her out, what Emily Wickersham later said about leaving, and how Bishop came back in 2026.
Wickersham announced her exit the night the season 18 finale aired and gave no explanation. The reason most fans settled on turned out to have arrived after she'd already gone.
Wickersham joined NCIS in season 11, in 2013, as Eleanor "Ellie" Bishop, an NSA analyst who became a special agent on Gibbs's team. She stayed eight seasons and, by her own count, 172 episodes. On May 25, 2021, the same night the season 18 finale aired, she posted on Instagram that she was leaving. CBS answered in the comments, calling her "our one and only Ellie Bishop."
How the show wrote her out
The finale revealed that Bishop had leaked a confidential NSA document some time earlier, and the leak got her fired. It also turned out to be useful. Odette Malone (Elayn J. Taylor), a former CIA instructor who had been training her, used the leak as cover for a long-term undercover assignment, so as far as most of the agency knew, Bishop left in disgrace. She also left without saying a proper goodbye to Nick Torres (Wilmer Valderrama), whose partnership with her had been building toward something for years.
The vagueness was deliberate. A disgraced agent working undercover for unnamed people can come back at any time, as anyone.
Why Wickersham actually left
Two months after the finale, Wickersham announced on Instagram that she was expecting a boy with her partner, actor James Badge Dale. The timing made the explanation look obvious, and it became the accepted version.
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She corrected it in August 2024 on Off Duty: An NCIS Rewatch, the podcast hosted by her former castmates Brian Dietzen and Sean Murray. The decision to leave came first. She said it was simply time and she was ready to move on to something else, and the pregnancy turned out to be the something else.
"I left the show, I found out I was pregnant a month later," Wickersham said on the podcast.
What happened next
Cassius Wickersham Dale was born on December 30, 2021, and a second son, Zephyr, followed. Wickersham stepped away from acting, and Bishop stayed her most recent credit for almost five years. Then season 23 came calling.
- The fall finale — the season's midseason cliffhanger ends on a surprise cameo. Bishop is the first target of the new NCIS: Elite unit led by Jessica Knight, the agent Katrina Law has played since the season after Bishop's exit.
- "Her" (March 3, 2026 ) — season 23, episode 10, directed by Rocky Carroll. Bishop has been designated a wanted cyber-terrorist after her undercover associates are caught in a hack, and the first person she turns to is Torres.
- The explanation — Bishop tells Torres she left to push her career further and skipped the goodbye because she thought he might talk her into staying.
- The ending — with the team's help her record is cleared. She asks Torres to come with her, and he turns her down.
Executive producer Steven D. Binder pitched the episode as closure for Torres. Wickersham appeared in that one episode only, and the show was careful to send her off with her status settled this time.
Wickersham described the character she came back to as "the new Bishop," someone who had gone off, lived another life and returned with more baggage.
NCIS has now spent five years and two storylines explaining one departure. The short version is still the one Wickersham gave the podcast: she was ready to go, and a month later she had somewhere else to be.
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