The Real Reason Emily Wickersham's Ellie Bishop Left NCIS

Fans adored Ellie Bishop (Emily Wickersham), so they were shocked when she decided to leave Team Gibbs and the NCIS world at the end of Season 18. But it seems the reason for Wickersham's departure is simple; she wanted to move on and try something else. "I was ready to leave the show. Y'know, it was time and I was ready to move on," she explained on "Off Duty: An NCIS Rewatch."

The official reason for Ellie's departure, meanwhile, is that she's currently participating in an undercover mission for Odette Malone (Elayn J. Taylor). Odette wants to give Ellie special training, and Ellie is excited by this new vocation. But on the way out the door, in one of the most heartbreaking Eleanor Bishop moments ever, it's revealed she has been blamed for an old intelligence leak that took place ten years before. Her colleagues begin to believe that Ellie's been a saboteur the whole time, but this turns out to be a cover story: Odette planted the evidence because she wanted Ellie to be burned by the intelligence community at large and thus seem more trustworthy to her new deep cover targets. Ellie ends up abandoning a burgeoning romance with Nick Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) to accomplish her mission, resulting in Torres' most heartbreaking moment on the show.

Wickersham, meanwhile, has definitely moved on from "NCIS" herself. She and James Badge Dale got married on September 27, 2024. They've also welcomed two sons, Cassius Wickersham Dale in 2021 and Zephyr Badgett Dale in 2024. But her career has gone quiet since she embraced motherhood.  

Unfortunately for her fans, Emily Wickersham hasn't taken on a new role since leaving Ellie behind. The actor admits she needed to take a breath and relax after working so hard on "NCIS." "It was a combo of decompressing and trying to really relax and figure out how things were going to be without work," she said on "Off Duty: An NCIS Rewatch." "Because as you guys know, it's all consuming. Your life is all 'NCIS' when you're on that show. It's all day, every day, and you're not really left with much time to do many things outside of that. So that was a real adjustment for me."

There's no word as to whether Wickersham will resume her career, or if Ellie Bishop will make a return to "NCIS" in a guest-starring capacity. In the meantime, Wickersham keeps her fans posted on how things are going for her via her Instagram. In 2025, she reunited with former "NCIS" co-executive producer and "NCIS: Origins" co-showrunner David J. North: She apparently spent time watching a rough cut of Episode 5 of "Origins" Season 2, and even came away with a cap bearing the show's logo. It's clear she hasn't burned any bridges, even if Ellie has.