NCIS fans know Tim McGee as a still-slightly-geeky but capable agent who’s also a great husband to Delilah (Margo Harshman) and a dad. But the March 17 episode had a seemingly traditional case that changed McGee’s life forever.
The murder of a drone pilot who was doing side work investigating a missing woman had McGee thrown; he saw the body with the photo of Olivia (Elena Goode), whom McGee dated for a few months back in 2008, before he met Delilah.
The team investigated the research facility Olivia worked at, where McGee met bumbling intern Pete (Patrick Keleher). It turned out Pete was really Mateo, Olivia’s son, who was searching for her. He mentioned how his birth father had run off before he was born, and it didn’t take McGee long to do the math.
Amid various twists and turns, a DNA test proved it: Mateo was McGee’s son. A rescued Olivia confessed she was young and scared when she found herself pregnant after she and McGee broke up. She knew that McGee would want to marry if he’d known and that she wasn’t truly right for him, like Delilah would be.
The episode ended with McGee still wrestling with this. Speaking to USA Today, Sean Murray summed up how this is a huge shock to McGee, who worries he unknowingly became a deadbeat dad.
"McGee has already prided himself in being a good father because his relationship with his own father was not wonderful. The idea that he has an 18-year-old son freaks him out at first, but he falls into the father role naturally."
Indeed, despite a rough start, McGee and Mateo seemed to be on good terms, accepting this dynamic. So how far will this go?
Murray assured fans this is not going to be a plot point that comes up only in this episode and then dropped. Instead, the ripple effects of McGee’s son will reverberate for a while.
"So much remains to be seen, such as, how is Delilah going to react to this? We're not going to set this and forget it. We'll revisit this for sure."
It’s a very unexpected twist that throws so much of McGee’s life off. It comes off as a bit of a soap opera with a long-secret son, and fans may be concerned this is a twist just for the sake of a twist rather than actually serving the plot. It may show McGee’s maturity in how he can be a good dad, even to a son he never knew existed at all and wants to make up for lost time.
Murray points out how it’ll be huge to see Delilah’s reaction to this, and she may have words for Olivia on keeping this so quiet. There will be Tim wrestling with inviting Mateo to family gatherings and holidays and if he might go too far and only anger the youth. McGee has to accept that Mateo has been his own man for a long time and not just a clone of his dad.
It’s still up in the air how this will all fall out, yet this is a plotline that will continue to shake up NCIS and especially McGee, as his family has unknowingly grown.
NCIS season 23 airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on CBS.