NCIS Season 22: McGee's Episode 19 Gibbs Dream Explained

Contains spoilers for "NCIS" Season 22, Episode 19 — "Irreconcilable Differences"

Tim McGee (Sean Murray) has been having one awfully hard year. He's spending so much time trying to take down Deputy Director LaRoche (Seamus Dever) that he's begun to neglect his family, fall behind on his work, and even have terrible nightmares. The bone-chilling vision that haunts him in "Irreconcilable Differences," for instance, puts him in the headspace of one important figure in the "NCIS" universe — Leroy Jethro Gibbs (Mark Harmon). 

Tim dreams he's in Gibbs' basement, and even does things that Gibbs might do there. But when someone else enters the room, Tim turns around, expecting it to be Gibbs — only to meet face to face with LaRoche and get shot, which wakes him up. McGee is understandably freaked out by the nightmare, but when he tells two of his colleagues offscreen about his nocturnal torture, Jessica Knight (Katrina Law) thinks she can explain Tim's terror away. "Classic fear of failure nightmare," she remarks. She guesses that Tim is afraid he can't live up to Gibbs' high standards, and is worried that he's messed the LaRoche investigation up.

And it turns out that Tim isn't the only team member who's had a Gibbs-related dream, although the other one we hear about is a bit more mundane.

There are a couple of important differences between Gibbs' reality and the one in Tim's dream, but clearly Tim still feels like Gibbs is keeping a watchful eye on him. There's a speedboat — with Tim's name on it — in the basement instead of the sailboat Gibbs was building, for instance. McGee is wearing a USMC hoodie much like the sort Gibbs used to sport when he was off duty. He even pours himself a glass of the type of bourbon Gibbs loves — only to choke and sputter when he tastes it. Tim spies a postcard from Alaska, where Gibbs has retired to. While looking at the missive from his mentor, a TV in the basement turns on, revealing that McGee is being surveilled by hidden cameras. 

When Tim tells his friends about his dream, it seems that at least one of them is also a bit haunted by their old leader, only in a more indirect fashion. Nick Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) later confesses to Jessica that he once had a dream about his boss. "He handed me a virgin pina colada and told me to stop slouching," Nick reveals. When she asks him what that could mean, he has no clue, as he's no sloucher. 

Jessica, meanwhile, tells Nick that she's never once had a dream about Gibbs, but it turns out that Tim and Nick aren't alone when it comes to having nighttime visits from their old boss. "Everyone's had one," Nick insists. While audiences would likely give their eyeteeth to know what sort of Gibbs-induced visions characters like Alden Parker (Gary Cole) might have had, that will remain an unsolved mystery for the time being.