Wilmer Valderrama Reveals NCIS Backstage Pix With Cote de Pablo

Last night, the Season 16 finale of NCIS re-aired, which means next week’s Season 17 premiere picks up where the Ziva action left off — and fans couldn’t be more excited. But it seems that having Cote de Pablo back on set isn’t just making fans happy.

Relatively new cast member Wilmer Valderrama (he joined NCIS during Season 14), who plays Nick Torres, has been having a great time sharing behind-the-scenes pictures of de Pablo, who brings her uber-popular character, Ziva David, back to save Gibbs (Mark Harmon) from some trouble he’s found himself in.

He recently shared a great photo to Instagram of the two sitting in their director chairs (complete with their names on them), talking, with the caption, “Always a great chat with this superwoman… so excited for y’all to watch! #NCIS IS BACK next Tuesday September 24th!!! #NickTorres #ZivaDavid #BehindTheScenes”

But we’ve also gotten to see the two characters pulling out their weapons on some dirtbags, which lets fans know they not only meet but get to work together. Valderrama wrote that caption saying, “Torres and Ziva walk into a bar… Well, remind me never to invite them to a bar…#NCIS IS BACK September 24 #ZivaDavid #NickTorres”

It has been an incredibly long wait for fans, who refused to believe Ziva was killed in that explosion several years ago but still have many unanswered questions, including where has she been hiding all these years, why has she been hiding, and more importantly — is she with her daughter and fellow former agent, Tony DiNozzo (played by Bull’s Michael Weatherly)?

Will this season premiere answer these burning questions? Maybe a couple but probably not everything to fans’ satisfaction — it wouldn’t be NCIS if it did. Will de Pablo’s Ziva be on more than this one episode of the CBS hit?

That’s not known either at this time, but now that everyone knows that she’s definitely alive, it’s a good bet that fans will be clamoring for her to make more appearances on NCIS.