Lala and Gibbs headed to Mexico to handle a cartel trafficking girls in NCIS: Origins season 1, episode 9. It led to a mention of Hernandez, and now Lala understandably doesn’t trust her partner.
The most recent episode of NCIS: Origins saw Gibbs and Lala tackle a case that linked to Hernandez. Lala knows that Hernandez was responsible for the deaths of Shannon and Kelly. She wanted to get to the bottom of that case, bringing Hernandez to justice for everything that happened.
When Lala mentioned Hernandez, Gibbs remained expressionless. This immediately had us wondering what was going to happen. I think a lot of people like me expected Gibbs to go off or stay in Mexico for a bit to get his revenge. However, it turned out that he had already gained it.
Lala has put all the pieces together in NCIS: Origins
At the end of the episode, Lala shared that Hernandez is dead. He’s been dead for six months, killed by a sniper. We cut to six months earlier as Gibbs finally figured out where Hernandez was, ripped off his cast around his leg, and went to Mexico to get his revenge. It’s no wonder he was so emotionless when Lala mentioned his name.
It didn’t take long for Lala to put all the pieces together, and she is angry. In the trailer for the winter finale, we learn that Lala doesn’t trust Gibbs, and she certainly doesn’t trust Gibbs and Franks together. After all, it’s clear that Franks knows what Gibbs did and has done nothing about it.
To be honest, Lala probably isn’t all that angry at Gibbs killing Hernandez. While she wants to see justice done the right way, she can probably understand the need to take matters into your own hands. What makes her angry is the way she was left chasing her tail to find Hernandez when Gibbs and (likely) Franks knew that he was already dead. She wasted time and effort on a man who was six feet under.
There’s also the fact that she felt so guilty for not being able to find Hernandez up to this point. She wanted to get justice for Gibbs’s family, and she felt for him with everything that he was going through. She felt like his pain was partly her fault. Now it turns out that she hasn’t been able to find Hernandez because of Gibbs, so of course she’s angry. When she was sharing her guilt, he could have told her the truth.
So of course Lala now doesn’t trust Gibbs. She can tell that she can’t read his expressions, and she’ll feel like he doesn’t really care about her. This is sure to put a spanner in the works between the two of them as partners, especially as we see Gibbs and Franks working together more.
NCIS: Origins airs Mondays at 10/9c on CBS. Catch up the following day on Paramount+.
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