Will there ever be a “Deeks, M”? We STILL have so many questions!

It’s that time of year, the time when we ask a seemingly eternal NCIS: Los Angeles question: Will there ever be a “Deeks, M” episode? Ever since wikiDeeks came into existence, we’ve been advocating for this special episode that other members of the team (and other recurring characters) have enjoyed, episodes that fleshed out each character and revealed important backstories. We won’t give up and choose to believe that Season 13 will be a lucky one for us Deeks fans.

In the coming weeks, we’re going to share special fan fics offering possible answers about some of our outstanding questions. We hope you’ll find them entertaining, and that the stories will fill the gaps until we finally get the official answers we seek.

Before we launch the series, here’s a reminder of just some of the many questions we have. Surely there are enough to justify not just a “Deeks, M” episode but a two-parter with a “Brandel, M” start. (And not to be greedy or anything, but we could also have a “Deeks, R” and a “Brandel, G” if anyone wanted to really cover these topics!) If you want to read more about a question, just follow the link to last year’s article that covered it in more depth, with thorough analyses of what we already know, what we don’t know, and why knowing is important. #SoManyQuestions #DeeksM

Question #1: Why is Deeks’ name different than his father’s? 
Excerpted and amended from Psyched’s original post. Read her fanfic here.

Deeks does not share a surname with his father Gordon John Brandel, but with his mother Roberta. We know Roberta Deeks and Brandel were married, likely after Deeks was born, and that Roberta has actually been married twice. We also know that Deeks is obviously a name our favorite detective is proud of. After all, he uses it like a first name.

It’s easy to assume that Deeks was Roberta’s maiden name and that’s why she chose to put it on her son’s birth certificate, but that isn’t the only option. It’s also conceivable that Deeks was named Brandel at birth but had his last name legally changed, either at his choosing or Roberta’s, sometime after the divorce. Another possibility is that he was born Brandel and was legally adopted by Bertie’s second husband, whose last name is/was Deeks.

The knowledge that Roberta and Brandel weren’t married when she got pregnant begs the question: is that why they married? Could Brandel have blamed the pregnancy, and by extension little Marty himself, for forcing him to tie the knot? And regardless of his last name, what happened to Roberta’s second husband? Does Deeks have any contact with him? If Deeks is Roberta’s second husband’s name, does that mean our Deeks had a good enough relationship with his stepfather that he would take and use his family name? We know something about the tragedy in Deeks’ young life, but could he have had a father figure whose name he wanted to carry on and possibly give to his own children?

Question #2: What happened to Deeks after he shot his father?
Excerpted and amended from Diane’s original post

Deeks shot his father in self-defense after he pointed a gun at Deeks and his mother. We might assume that Deeks was arrested and had his day in juvenile court. But imagine what it was like for a young boy to be incarcerated for such an emotionally charged event. This trauma had to have an immediate as well as a long term effect on someone so young. It’s possible that another person could have used this traumatic event as a jumping off point to a life of violence and brutality, but somehow Deeks overcame this possible future and instead changed his life around. This was a huge turning point in his life because Deeks eventually decided to dedicate his life to fighting evil and injustice.

Was Deeks’ legal team able to prove he shot his father in self-defense? If not, was he convicted and did he serve any time in the juvenile system? But the main question is did he spend any time in juvie and for how long? Up until the time Mama Deeks came back into his life, Deeks never talked about her. Was he removed from his parents’ custody and put into a foster home? If so, did he find a mentor to get him through the next period of his life, including secondary education and college?

Does having sealed documents imply that 11-year-old Deeks was arrested for shooting his dad or did he become a ward of the court? This leads us to another question: how long has Hetty been following Deeks? Could he be one of her lost boys like Callen?

Question #3: Why did Deeks pursue a career in law & become a public defender?
Excerpted and amended from Diane’s original post

Deeks was a lawyer and chose to become a public defender, one of “the rebels of the legal profession.” The question is, what exactly inspired him to make this particular career choice? Did he have a legal mentor while going through the court and juvey systems? The sensitive young man may have envisioned a career in law as a way of paying back the people who encouraged him and set him on the right path after shooting his father.

Might such a mentor have been a public defender? On its face, it’s a slightly surprising choice given that public defenders spend much of their time representing clients who are likely guilty of the crimes they’re accused of. People like his father. What did Deeks see in this particular legal role that appealed to him? Was it the idealized version of the job that captured young Deeks’ imagination, the version that would defend the unfairly accused? Maybe defend clients like little 11-year-old Marty who had shot his dad in self-defense?

Also, how did he get through college and law school and what was his motivation? Did exotic dancing pave the way or was that part-time gig supplemented by scholarships or maybe even by Roberta or her second husband?

Question #4: Why did Deeks go from being a public defender to a police officer?
Excerpted and amended from Gayle’s original post

Deeks eventually moved from Public Defender to LAPD cop. Was this career change at least in part related to his traumatic childhood? Being a lawyer targets that drive for justice. That drive, however, likely got frustrated by the lawyer’s place in the timeline of events: after a crime has been committed. Working as a lawyer would have shown him that cops were out in the field with the opportunity to stop some of these wrongs before they happened. Also, do we really believe Deeks wasn’t restless as we envision the suit, tie, and desk as well as the restrictions of the Bar and penal code?

We’re often forced to speculate what the detective will do as he grows his family and becomes a father (in some fashion). The simplest option is to go back to being a lawyer. However, Deeks typically doesn’t take the easy route. Add to that there’s a reason he left law in the first place. Plus, can we honestly envision Deeks settling into a hum-drum, structured, nine to five office environment after his days of running and gunning?

Question #5: When did Max Gentry first appear? 
Excerpted and amended from my original post

One of the most intriguing aspects of Marty Deeks is the origin of his dark alter ego, his “infamous” undercover alias Max Gentry. Max bears a striking resemblance to the description we have of Deeks’ father, Gordon John Brandel, with both men hard drinkers prone to violence.

Was Max one of Deeks’ primary LAPD undercover roles? How early on did Deeks first use Max? Was it undercover with arms dealers, or might Max have developed much earlier, perhaps as a persona that a teenage Deeks took on in his rough neighborhood growing up, or maybe even as an imaginary side of himself as a little boy, one who was better able to stand up to his abusive father? Knowing would cast light on that time period in his life and provide an opening for us to learn more about what life was like either with Gordon Brandel, or after he was gone from Deeks’ life.

Related, but even more intriguing, is the question of how Max first emerged. Exactly how close to Gordon John Brandel is Max? And was it a conscious choice to model Max’s behavior after his father, or did he emerge out of Deeks’ subconscious at some point when he needed a tough persona to protect him? A deeper exploration of this dark side could help viewers better understand Deeks himself.

It could also set a story in motion that helps him reconcile his dark past, that lets him find peace with it – with his father, his mother, and his own past misdeeds – and lays the groundwork for him to move into the future with the brightest possible prospects for a life that is the true opposite of Max and Gordon Brandel.

Question #6: What were the exact circumstances behind the shooting of Francis Boyle?
Excerpted and amended from my original post

Deeks killed his former partner to protect a young prostitute and lied about it to the people who care about him most. We can infer that he did it “for the right reasons.” But one major question remains: was Deeks a murderer?

What were the exact circumstances of Boyle’s death? It could be anything from 100% self-defense to 100% calculated, cold-blooded murder. (Or might Tiffany have done it, and Deeks is just continuing to protect her, even in his conversation with Hetty?) Assuming Deeks did shoot Boyle, we really have no idea how it happened. We know he’s triggered by seeing women in danger, and knowing that (blonde) Tiffany had been beat up by an abusive man like Boyle would have taken him right back to his origin story moment of shooting his dad in self-defense. There’s a ton of gray area here between Deeks interceding to save Tiffany’s life in the moment, and in a moment of rage, acting to protect her and all the other girls like her from being hurt in the future.

When “Internal Affairs” first aired, many long-time Deeks fans assumed he had killed Boyle in a less than self-defense situation, and they questioned their faith and trust in him. Some even abandoned him and the show as a result. It was a Big Deal. It goes straight to the center of who Marty Deeks is, and to what extent his traumatic childhood scarred him. We know it’s impacted him in many ways, but was he capable of first- or second-degree murder as a result? To put it another way, we know Deeks has a dark side, but exactly how dark does that side go?

Question #7: Why did Deeks swear off female partners before he met Kensi?
Excerpted and amended from Psyched’s original post

Bates told Kensi that Deeks had sworn he’d never again work with a female partner. We don’t know much about his past work history with female partners other than that he may have slept with Jess Traynor, his case officer/partner who was killed during “Human Traffic.” How many other female partners did Deeks have and what were his experiences with them? Was he partnered with a woman either as a uniformed cop, in the Robbery squad, or once he started going undercover?

Whether or not Traynor was the only one, if in fact she and Deeks slept together not long before she was killed, would that be enough to make him swear off female partners? Were they actually involved before they worked together, making Jess’s loss greater than we believed? Did Deeks think he was somehow responsible – that because he was physically and/or emotionally involved with a fellow detective it led to her death? Or is it because Deeks recognized that strong, kick-ass women are his “type” and that it is too risky to be attracted to his partner?

If we already have the answer – that his possible relationship with Jess Traynor was short-lived because she was killed on the job – does that have any relevance to his early relationship/partnership with Kensi? Is this why Deeks denied the existence of a thing between them for so long? Or why he’s become so anxious to get both of them out of the field?

Question #8: Where was Deeks’ mother before she finally appeared in Season 7?
Excerpted and amended from Psyched’s original post

Roberta Deeks “still has a copy” of a newspaper article about her son being attacked by his friend’s boa constrictor, yet she was not listed as his next of kin in “Personal,” nor did Deeks appear anxious to let her know that he’d nearly been killed. It’s possible that Deeks didn’t want his mama at the hospital because she’s not good in a crisis, but it doesn’t explain where she was during that time, and for the next five years during which we heard nothing about her.

Was it simply a matter of distance? We don’t know when Roberta’s second marriage occurred – maybe she was married then, making Deeks less likely to want to interrupt her life. Could this marriage have put stress on their relationship in other ways? Timing wise, maybe she moved to L.A. after the marriage ended and wanted a fresh start closer to her son. Or is it possible that Roberta was in rehab, or stayed away to avoid triggers from her old life in L.A.?

Finally, might Deeks and his mother have been estranged by more than distance? The events of his childhood made them a tight pair, so what might have strained their relationship to the point that they didn’t talk or see one another for years? Perhaps they lost touch because any contact only led to a rehashing of the same argument about his dangerous profession. Perhaps, knowing Kensi was “the one,” Deeks wanted her to meet his mother, and so started mending fences sometime prior to her sudden appearance in Season 7.

This is one of the most important, and certainly longest, relationships Deeks has. As much as we appreciate all the time we get to see them together, Deeks (and Bertie) fans would like to know if there’s a story behind her absence.

Question #9: How are Ray and his family doing?
Excerpted and amended from Diane’s original post

One of Deeks’ closest childhood friends was Ray Martindale, who gave Deeks the revolver he used to protect himself and his mother when he was eleven years old. Ray later became Deeks’ confidential informant and after testifying against a weapons dealer, went into witness protection with his pregnant girlfriend, Jenna. At the time, he begged Deeks to let him know how his relationship with “Wikipedia Kensi” turned out. You might think Deeks has a lot of news to pass along to his old friend by now. So where is Ray and what has he been up to? Has he been in touch with Deeks?

Ray promised Deeks he would go straight and live the good life for his family, but was he able to fulfill that promise? If not, the result could make for an angsty episode that forces Deeks to examine his own past and how differently his life might have turned out. If Ray has been safe this whole time, his experience as a father would no doubt provide a great opportunity for Deeks to explore his own desire to have children, and maybe to lessen some of the self-doubt he has about becoming a father.

Along the way this storyline could tell us more about Deeks’ early life growing up with Ray. What was it like in their rough neighborhood, and how did Ray help Deeks after he shot his dad? Did they continue to remain close? Ray might be the perfect vehicle through which we could learn all sorts of things about Deeks’ past, including what happened after he shot his father, why he decided to become an attorney, and maybe even why he changed course and joined LAPD.

Question #10: Could Deeks’ father actually be alive?
Excerpted and amended from Gayle’s original post

Hetty told Deeks that, after being released from prison in 1996, his father Gordon John Brandel had been killed in an auto accident in 1998. But could Deeks’ father actually be alive? Of course.

The biggest question is one that applies to virtually everything associated with this show: Was Hetty telling the truth? Is Deeks’ father actually dead, or was Hetty choosing to protect Deeks from the truth? Was this her way of helping put those traumatic memories in the past? Is there something even more sinister about this man that Hetty wants to protect Deeks from? Was there an action or characteristic of Mr. Brandel that justifies Hetty’s decision, or is she again controlling the situation based on her own whims?

Whether Deeks’ father had been listed as next-of-kin on LAPD and/or NCIS documents remains another open question. Was it listed and just wasn’t shared with the hospital staff? Or was Hetty intentionally hiding it?

Shooting his father and the reason for doing so may have been one of, if not the, driving forces that put him on the path to being a lawyer, shifting to law enforcement, and accepting a broader role with NCIS. It also connects to Deeks’ potential concerns about being a good husband and hopefully future father.

If his father is still roaming the world, did jail set him on the “straight and narrow”? Would he be looking to make amends with his son? Would Deeks actually forgive him and welcome his father into his life? Or would this be just one more thing Deeks would need to protect himself and his “family” from in the future? Then, as always, it’s another opportunity to gauge Hetty’s trustworthiness…

. . .

By the way, thanks to Lindy for the beautiful artwork accompanying the series. Tune in this Wednesday for the first story, as Donna answers Question #1: Why is Deeks’ name different than his father’s? In the meantime, what additional questions do you still have about Deeks? What do you most want to know?