NCIS shocked fans at the end of the penultimate episode by not only having Parker (Gary Cole) take care of Rogers (J. Paul Boehmer), the former Army CID director part of the weapons smuggling ring that Vance (Rocky Carroll) died helping to take down, rather than let him go into witness protection, but also having him enlist a very familiar sniper to do so. As Parker revealed in the final moments, he was cooking salmon, fresh from Alaska, for his sister, Harriet (Nancy Travis). Only a sniper as skilled as Gibbs (Mark Harmon), who just so happens to be living in Alaska now, could have taken the shot. It’s a moment that executive producer Steven D. Binder tells TV Insider he’s very glad happened.

“Maybe if you gave me one hand to choose the things I’m most proud of on this series, that’s going to be on the hand for sure,” he says.

The series has mentioned Gibbs a few times since Harmon last appeared onscreen in Season 19 — he has since appeared twice on the prequel, NCIS: Origins — including money deposited into people’s accounts and hearing that Vera (Roma Maffia) is apparently in contact with him. But that’s it.

“One of the things we’ve resisted doing is placing him in any specific area or job or location. I know Origins has done that to some degree, but you don’t necessarily know what time when Gibbs is sitting around the fire, you don’t necessarily know when that’s storytelling’s occurring. It could be at any point. It could have been the night we dropped him off in Alaska,” Binder shares.

“We’ve been specifically avoiding Gibbs because I’ve always felt that Gibbs is a larger-than-life kind of guy, and you almost imagine he’s transitioned to another plane of existence. I don’t want to think of Gibbs living in an apartment in Anchorage. That’s not what I want to think of him,” he explains. “I want to think of him permanently in the woods, fishing, however that works. So I’ve been very careful about when we bring him back, if we were to bring him back in any way, that we don’t burst that bubble and we continue letting him be this larger-than-life character.”

And so there was that part of it, but there was another to bringing him back, albeit not onscreen, at least not yet, as well.

“The second piece is, it had to be worthy. It had to be worthy for Gibbs to come back,” Binder says. “And what happened in the penultimate episode, I think, is about as worthy as it gets: protecting his family.”

As we learned, Rogers’ transport into witness protection was stalled the same way that the car of someone from the Parkers’ siblings’ past was. Then, a sniper took him out from 4500 feet away.

What did you think of that “return” from Gibbs? Let us know in the comments section below.

NCIS, Season 24 Finale, Tuesday, May 12, 8/7c, CBS