Note: Contains spoilers for NCIS season 17, episode one.
Season 16 of long-running US procedural show NCIS ended with the shock resurrection of a character believed dead for years – agent Ziva David, played by Cote de Pablo. Turning up in Gibbs' basement, Ziva told her former boss – and father figure – that his life was in danger. And in 'Out of the Darkness', the season 17 premiere that aired this week, that turned out to be something of an understatement.
But what does Ziva's return mean for Gibbs and his fellow agents, and for the show itself?
Related: NCIS season 18 – everything you need to know
Contrary to some of the theories flying around earlier this year, it really is Ziva who's there, rather than a ghost or a hallucination, and the various hints as to her survival that were peppered throughout the latter part of season 16 were accurate.
Her return is accompanied by gunmen shooting up Gibbs' basement – leading to injuries that take time to heal, judging by photographs released from later episodes – and the pair have to escape. Like the audience, Gibbs is full of questions about Ziva's escape from the mortar attack that destroyed her family's farmhouse in Israel, and he quickly realises that she's not the woman he knew five years earlier.
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Flashbacks fill in some, but by no means all of the story in the opener, and there are clearly going to be ramifications of Ziva's missing years in at least the four other episodes for which Cote de Pablo has been contracted this season.
Ziva has questions for Gibbs too, and these go to the heart of NCIS' success – the interplay between the characters. There's a difficult scene between the two towards the end of the episode where she questions why he didn't come after her, to which he doesn't have an answer.
That's mirrored in other scenes where Director Vance reminds the other agents that Gibbs would move mountains if any of his team went missing – yet he didn't do so for Ziva. There's a real-world explanation, of course – Ziva's death at the time was used to set up Michael Weatherly's departure as Ziva's lover, Tony DiNozzo, at a time when Cote de Pablo's return was deemed highly unlikely, but not impossible.
"It was a conscious decision not to show the body, not to have DNA proof, just to keep that door open for the future," executive producer Frank Cardea explained to ET.
This is all part of what Cardea's fellow executive producer Steven D Binder describes as 'Family therapy with Bin Laden on your ass'. There are plenty of issues for all of the team to work out in light of Ziva's return: secrets and lies abound between them in the opening episode.
Eleanor Bishop knew Ziva was alive, after finding a note from her last season, but at Ziva's request, kept it hidden. Across the episode, others find out, and the respect that those who knew Ziva – Timothy McGee and Director Vance in particular – hold for her leads to some decisions that may have far-reaching consequences.
"It's a very complicated square of feelings and emotions that everyone has with everyone," Binder adds. The essential trust between the team members has been a fundamental part of NCIS – not just the main show, but the two spin-offs, NCIS: LA and NCIS: New Orleans – and anything which threatens that can't be quickly shoved under the carpet.
Ziva's arc is not going to dominate the whole season, although Binder notes, "There will be a very large full circle when all is said and done. It will be emotionally obvious. It will be for a lot of characters, not just Ziva. There's a big bookend here."
The characters who joined the show in the wake of Cote de Pablo's departure will get the spotlight on them later in the year. There's a big story coming up for Diona Reasonover's character Casey, the executive producers promise, and the relationship between Nick Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) and Ellie Bishop is going to progress.
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It's an area that has already been explored once before on the show, so how and where it goes is still under discussion between producers and writers. And fear not, Ducky fans: David McCallum may have turned 86 this month, but Dr Mallard will still be making regular appearances – he's in at least two of the first three episodes.
NCIS also hits its 400th episode later in the year. For the 300th, they featured many real-life heroes, and a musical montage from the MusiCorps Wounded Warrior Band, but the producers are keeping things close to their chest for now regarding the milestone – something that only half a dozen other primetime shows have achieved previously.
Before then, expect the show to maintain its reputation for featuring contemporary concerns for the military – and for Gibbs to interrupt yet another key conversation with a cry of "Grab your gear – dead Marine…"
NCIS airs on CBS in the US, and on FOX UK in the UK.
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