CBS Had Room for One More NCIS Show. It Wasn’t Tony and Ziva

The photo is from behind. Two people walk away from the camera, back toward their trailers, on the day Cote de Pablo filmed her final scene as a regular on NCIS.

On December 19, 2025, she posted it again.

“Twelve years ago, after my final scene on NCIS, Michael and I walked back to our trailers and this photo was taken,” she wrote on Instagram. “We had no idea then that Tony and Ziva’s story would one day come full circle. Today, this photo carries a beautiful new meaning. May Tony and Ziva walk into their forever.”

Hours earlier, fans had found out there would be no Season 2.

Quick answer: Paramount+ canceled NCIS: Tony & Ziva in December 2025 after one 10-episode season. In April 2026, CBS ordered a brand-new spinoff, NCIS: New York, starring LL Cool J as Sam Hanna. Asked why it didn’t bring Tony and Ziva back instead, CBS Entertainment President Amy Reisenbach said: “We really wanted to bring the Sam Hanna character back.”

The Show Fans Waited a Decade For

For years, “Tiva” fans held onto the ending NCIS never gave them. Ziva left in Season 11. Tony left in Season 13 to raise their daughter, Tali, believing Ziva was dead. When the show later revealed she was alive, the hoping started again.

Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo finally got to give it to them on Paramount+. NCIS: Tony & Ziva premiered on September 4, 2025, and found the two of them in Paris, co-parenting Tali, until an attack on Tony’s security company sent the family on the run across Europe.

De Pablo talked about it like something the two of them owed to the people who never stopped asking. “All we know is that we had to do this. Michael and I felt we owed it to the fans,” she said as the show launched. “If we got a chance to do it again, we’d be thrilled.”

The October 23 finale ended softly. Tony and Ziva told Tali they wanted to start dating again, and she gave them her blessing. Ziva handed Tony a photo of Tali with his late friend Henry. It was a happy place to stop, but fans didn’t think the story was over.

Why Season 2 Never Came

Two months after that finale, Paramount+ and CBS Studios ended it. Weatherly and de Pablo shared a joint statement that read like a goodbye they had already made peace with: “We feel incredibly lucky to have had the chance to play these characters once again and to tell the next chapter of Tony and Ziva’s story.” They thanked the fans who “finally got to see Tony and Ziva find their happily ever after.”

Nobody at Paramount gave a detailed public reason. The numbers that did come out tell part of the story. The series opened solidly, then saw a 51% drop-off across its first three episodes, based on Luminate data.

There was also where it lived. The other NCIS shows air on CBS, where millions of people can watch for free. Tony & Ziva was streaming-only, and a lot of longtime fans either never subscribed or signed up only for this one show.

That’s the hard part. The fans who loved it were loud, but a streaming show needs people to keep watching, and fewer of them did.

The Question CBS Got in April

On April 15, 2026, CBS announced its fall schedule, including a new spinoff: NCIS: New York, from R. Scott Gemmill and Byron Balasco, with LL Cool J back as Senior Special Agent Sam Hanna.

So CBS had room for one more NCIS show. Deadline put the obvious question to Reisenbach: why launch something new instead of picking up the one that already existed?

“LL is like a member of our family at CBS, he’s done pop-ins on NCIS the last two years since LA ended, and it’s been really successful,” she told Deadline. “And the opportunity for Sam Hanna, who is originally from New York but lived in LA for NCIS: LA, to send him back home felt like a really ripe creative space to play in.”

Then the line that stung: “We really wanted to bring the Sam Hanna character back.”

She never said a word against Tony and Ziva. She didn’t have to. For fans, the answer was in what she didn’t say.

What Sam Hanna Gave CBS

From CBS’s side, the choice made sense. LL Cool J played Sam for 14 seasons on NCIS: Los Angeles and kept showing up across the franchise after it ended. Viewers already knew the former Navy SEAL, his code and his family. And unlike Tony & Ziva, his new show would air on broadcast TV on a Tuesday night, right after the flagship.

It worked. NCIS: New York premiered on October 6, 2026, and averaged 5.62 million viewers, second only to NCIS among that night’s scripted broadcast shows. With seven days of streaming and delayed viewing, the premiere reached 10.25 million. The show, which pairs Sam with Scott Caan’s Nick Schaeffer, already has a 20-episode order. (We looked at how it became CBS’s top new series here.)

So it wasn’t really a popularity contest. It was a network show with a built-in audience against a streaming show whose viewers had drifted.

Tony Came Home Anyway

Here’s the twist fans didn’t see coming. The man from the canceled spinoff ended up back in the middle of that Tuesday lineup.

Weatherly returned to NCIS for a season-long arc in Season 24, and the premiere, “Wayward Son,” ended with Tony DiNozzo as the new director of NCIS. Ziva had signed off on it. “When you’re a guy like Tony DiNozzo and the Secretary of the Navy says that to you, and your family has signed off, you sign in,” showrunner Steven D. Binder told TheWrap. And on his first day in the big chair, McGee finally got to call him “Probie.”

Weatherly doesn’t treat the spinoff as a dead end. He says it changed Tony. “NCIS: Tony & Ziva gave us a window into the emotional, paternal, responsible, mature side of DiNozzo,” he said before the premiere. “We got to see him running a company. We got to see him being a father.”

On NCIS: Origins, Mark Harmon’s Gibbs even walked back into headquarters to ask Director DiNozzo for help. Ziva, though, is still off screen.

Could Tony and Ziva Still Come Back?

There’s no announced plan to revive NCIS: Tony & Ziva, and de Pablo hasn’t been announced for Season 24 of NCIS. When Weatherly’s return was announced in July, CBS declined to comment on whether she would come back too.

But the show keeps her close. In this version of the story, Tali is at boarding school a few hours from D.C., and Ziva is near her. “Loving each other was never an issue. The problem has always been, can they be together without killing each other?” Binder said in September. “Whether or not her path will cross with our agents in D.C. is still an ongoing question — but rest assured, her presence will definitely be felt!” (Here’s where Ziva is on NCIS right now.)

That isn’t a promise. It isn’t a goodbye either.

CBS made a business decision, and the numbers back it up. Sam Hanna got his homecoming, and it’s a hit. That doesn’t make it hurt less for the fans who waited ten years, paid for a streaming service and got ten episodes.

They did get one thing the original NCIS never gave them. The last time we saw Tony and Ziva together, they were choosing each other. Tony is back in the building now, and the door to the director’s office isn’t closed.