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At the beginning of NCIS Season 11, Cote de Pablo left after eight seasons as the main actor. However, that wasn’t the last time we saw her character, Ziva David, who became a beloved addition to the popular CBS procedural when she was recruited to replace the murdered Caitlin Todd. De Pablo made a surprise appearance in the final moments of the season 16 finale, then appeared in several episodes of season 17. Great measures were taken to ensure the actress’ return remained a closely guarded secret , which executive producer Mark Horowitz described as “an invocation of the rules of Fight Club.”

Horowitz stopped Out of commission: an overhaul of NCIS to speak with Pablo and Tony DiNozzo actor Michael Weatherly, who will both be paired up again in the upcoming spin-off NCIS: Tony and Ziva. When the conversation turned to everything that went into planning Pablo’s season 16 cameo, the producer began by saying:

When you came back for your special episode… and we were all waiting for you. We were very good at keeping secrets. These surprises that happened in front of the audience were a surprise to many, many people who worked on the show who were not informed of what we were going to do. We did a whole thing where that scene was never released. It only existed on one sheet of paper, and we showed it to literally the dozen people who were going to be involved, and that was it. It was never disclosed to agents or anyone. The dailies were all separate. Everything was separate. It happened when Kate was shot on the roof, that’s where it all started. And we came up with what I called the rules of Fight Club. “We’re invoking the rules of Fight Club, we’re just not going to talk about it. And I mean, you’re not going to talk to your wife, your husband, your kids, your friends at the bar, nobody. And we managed to achieve this.

After Cote de Pablo’s exit as a series regular, Ziva was believed to have died off-screen near the end of season 13, although Tony did not believe it. After resigning from NCIS, he traveled to Israel to search for answers with their daughter Tali, whom he had only just learned about, and then to Paris to honor Ziva’s love of the French city. Then, in season 16, Ellie Bishop learned that Ziva was still alive, and at the end of that season’s finale, Pablo’s character showed up in Leroy Jethro Gibbs’ basement to warn her that he was in danger.

You can see how the rest of this story played out by watching NCIS Season 17 with your Paramount+ Subscriptionbut I love how Mark Horowitz and the show’s team channeled the first rule of the novel and film adaptation of Fight Club, “Don’t talk about Fight Club,” to ensure the secrecy of the return of Ziva. Horowitz also described what it was like the night Cote de Pablo arrived to film her cameo. As he explained:

Your return was one where we sent the entire crew except for a very small group of people. You got stuck in traffic or something. There was some kind of accident or something. So we waited, it was late, it was the last night of the last day of the season. I forbid anyone from taking photos, but I was there in front of my camera, and there was this moment when suddenly silence settled on the scene, and in the distance there were footsteps, very distinct boots that get closer and closer together. And everyone turned and looked and waited. And then at this street corner becomes the Côte de Pablo. It was a wonderful, wonderful moment.

When we left off with Ziva in Season 17, she was going to reunite with Tony and Tali in Paris, marking the first time the three would finally be together. Ziva has not been seen on NCIS since, however Tony made his own surprise return earlier this year for the tribute episode honoring David McCallum and his character, Donald “Ducky” Mallard. We’ll finally see Ziva and Tony reunited on screen in their aforementioned spinoff, which will be a Paramount+ exclusive and will follow them as they race across Europe after Tony’s security company is attacked.

NCIS: Tony and Ziva doesn’t have a release date set yet, but count on it premiering at some point on TV schedule 2025. New episodes of NCIS airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET on CBS, followed by the prequel series NCIS: Origins.