NCIS season 17 is set to premiere this fall. This time, when the long-running procedural drama returns to the television, it will bring back a fan-favourite and for a shocking reason.

Cote de Pablo's much-admired "NCIS" character Ziva David will be returning to work together with the team of special agents from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. According to Screen Rant, Ziva is returning to "save Gibbs' life." Not only that, she will also be reuniting with her daughter Tali.

Ziva's return was first teased in "NCIS" season 16 finale. She made an appearance at her former boss Leroy Jethro Gibbs' (Mark Harmon) house and warned him that his life was in danger. It was unclear if it was Ziva that Gibbs saw, or he was hallucinating about her ghost.

The latest trailer of the seventeenth season of the police procedural series confirmed that Ziva is alive and back. For three long years, NCIS assumed that she died in the explosion in 2016. However, she has been running and hiding from a dangerous woman who wants her dead. And now when she is back, it is revealed the woman is after Gibbs and she is coming to kill him. Who is this woman? No one knows anything about her except that her name is Sahar. Ziva has never met her.

Meanwhile, everyone at the agency is shocked to know that Ziva is alive. Nevertheless, they are angry that they were not told that Gibbs' life is in danger. According to the spoilers, Ziva will appear in the season premiere titled "Out of the Darkness," and will make her presence felt in another two episodes.

Speaking with TV Insider, Cote De Pablo revealed that the team is "very much in danger." And after losing her father in season 10, "she feels responsible for her father figure, Gibbs."

"She's also trying to keep her daughter a secret and safe from the people who are trying to get to Gibbs and to her," Pablo added.

Meanwhile, Ziva and Michael Weatherly's Tony DiNozzo made for a much-loved pair on the series. The couple left fans heartbroken when Pablo made an exit from the show at the end of "NCIS" season 10. Weatherly stayed for a while before exiting the show after season 13. Since their departure, fans of the onscreen couple have been clamouring for their return.

With Ziva's return, they are hoping to see Weatherly, who is assumed to be living in Paris with the couple's daughter Tali. When asked about their reunion, Pablo refrained from giving out a certain answer.

Mark Harmon
Mark Harmon as Leroy Jethro Gibbs in NCIS series CBS

"He's shooting a procedural [Bull]. I don't think Ziva and Tony have seen each other or communicated in a long time. Tali was delivered to him [by Mossad], and that was the end of it. Don't ask any questions, dot-dot-dot, to be continued," Pablo said about Tiva reunion.

"NCIS" season 17 airs Tuesday, September 24 on CBS.