Why did NCIS kill off Reeves? The reason, in Duane Henry's own words
Clayton Reeves lasted three seasons on NCIS before the show wrote him out for good, and Duane Henry has been unusually candid about how that decision came together. His account of the exit, the circumstances behind it, and why he signed off on it.
MI6 liaison officer Clayton Reeves arrived on NCIS as a guest star in season 13 in 2016, became a regular, and was gone by the end of season 15 — shot dead in the May 2018 episode "One Step Forward," with his death confirmed on an autopsy table in the following hour, "Two Steps Back." The character never got a long run. The actor has explained exactly why.
How Reeves died on the show
Reeves and Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perrette) are approached by an armed mugger outside a diner. Reeves hands over his wallet; when the man turns the gun on Abby, Reeves steps in front of her and takes the bullet. The follow-up episode lands the real twist: the "mugging" was a contracted hit on Abby, making Reeves' death not bad luck but a sacrifice that foiled an assassination. It was the same two-episode arc that wrote Perrette out of the show after 15 seasons — she survived; he didn't.
Read more: Where are NCIS actors now? Two of the departed ended up with a whole new show together
The reason, per Henry
Reeves was the creation of showrunner Gary Glasberg, who died unexpectedly on September 28, 2016, at age 50, just as season 14 was starting. Henry laid out the aftermath in a 2018 TVLine interview: Glasberg had been his champion since the first audition, and without him, nobody in the writers' room had a plan for the character.
"I was feeling a bit of panic in people's faces," Henry told TVLine in 2018.
Henry could tell the writers were unsure what future Reeves had — so he raised the question himself. He was also getting restless, admitting he had idle thumbs and wanted far more to do than an ensemble procedural could offer a supporting player. The write-off was, by his account, a mutual call between him and the producers, and he considered dying to save Abby about the best exit an actor could ask for.
Why the Perrette pairing mattered to him
There's a personal layer to who he died protecting. During his time on the show, Perrette had taken Henry in after learning he was homeless and couch surfing in Los Angeles — so his final scene was spent shielding the co-star who had once sheltered him. In an emotional social media post after the episode, Henry also revealed he'd lost both his girlfriend and a mentor while filming NCIS, credited putting on Reeves' suit with getting him through it, and thanked Glasberg's family, writing that Gary "changed my life."
Where Reeves sits in NCIS history
Permanent deaths of main-credit characters are rarer on NCIS than the body count suggests:
- Kate Todd (2005) — shot by Ari in the season 2 finale.
- Director Jenny Shepard (2008) — killed in a season 5 shootout.
- Mike Franks (2011) — Gibbs' mentor, killed defending the team.
- Clayton Reeves (2018) — the most recent, and still the last, main character the show has actually buried.
Ziva David, famously "killed" in 2016, turned out to be alive. Reeves stayed dead — which, given how Henry talks about the exit, is exactly how he wanted it.
Earlier we wrote: Zoe’s secret shakes up Lanterns episode 4, with Hal’s betrayal and a Manhunter twist