At PaleyFest—A Salute to the NCIS Universe event, Valderrama exclusively told Parade.com, “As of now, we are in conversations, and I hope to definitely not only come back but to be there for my co-stars. I love NCIS and I love what they’ve given me as a home, and I feel like my time at NCIS is not over yet.” The rumors began, of course, when Valderrama posted about an exciting new opportunity coming up to play Zorro in a live-action version of the series for Disney Branded Television, which is currently in development. “What I will tell you is it’s one of the greatest and most exciting moments,” he shared. “Since I was a child, I wanted to be Zorro, so to partner up with Walt Disney and help bring him to life and to develop a Zorro that is one I can take and ground into our history, but at the same time be adventurous and romantic and everything that we hope that he is, it’s going to be a ride of a lifetime. I am very, very proud to be able to bring Zorro to this new generation and give my daughter [Nakano Oceana Valderrama, 14 months] another example of a man that’s a man of his word.” Another reason that it seemed as if Torres might be resigning from NCIS is that there was that episode where he went to a very dark place and nothing was bringing him out of it. When Torres first appeared in the D.C. offices of NCIS, he was a lone wolf. But the team finally won him over and he became a member of the family, but then his family started to desert him with first Bishop’s (Emily Wickersham) departure and then Gibbs’ (Mark Harmon). “I think that when you think about abandonment and someone who has had those issues, the easiest thing for them to do is to come back to what they know, and that is to be the lone wolf again,” Valderrama said of Torres’ behavior since Gibbs’ exit. “That’s been getting him in a little bit of trouble. He’s been struggling with overdrinking, and he’s been trying to get ahold of that. I think that if all goes well then what I would say is, hopefully, he will find a little bit of peace. He’s a very tormented soul and, I think, you’re going to see him break a lot more often than you have in the past. Hopefully, all within the purpose of getting him back on track and being at peace again.” Torres’ backstory includes the abandonment by his father at a young age, and again, more recently when his father showed up and it looked as if they would reconcile. But then his father deserted him a second time, and Torres turned to Gibbs, who was a father figure to him. “Gibbs was there for him when his father abandoned him,” Valderrama points out. “To come full circle to that moment when he saw himself looking up to this man who was just as broken as he was. When we look at the future of our character, I want that to be a closed chapter for him because it’s important to create examples on television of people that actually are able to overcome their obstacles. In television, we tend to break our characters and have tragic endings. I definitely would love to have a run of something where I can have a character be an example to people.” NCIS airs Monday nights at 9 p.m. ET/PT on CBS, and tonight’s episode is a Torres-centric episode in which an infamous arms dealer, Reymundo Diaz (Joseph Melendez), is released from prison and bodies start piling up, so that Torres is forced to face the repercussions of his actions during an undercover operation he worked on years ago. Next,Find Out the Secret Past Gary Cole’s NCIS Character Alden Parker Has Been Hiding
