9-1-1: Lone Star is kicking off its fifth and final season with a massive emergency: a train derailment (and other rescues) over its first three episodes.
It’ll have been about 16 months since the Season 4 finale aired (the strikes delayed the drama’s return), and about a year in-show when the action picks up, and Owen (Rob Lowe) is still grieving his half-brother’s (Chad Lowe) death, Judd (Jim Parrack) has resigned, leaving the 126 without a lieutenant (and therefore some competition), Grace’s (Sierra McClain, not returning) absence needs to be explained, and what about marriage coming up for Tommy (Gina Torres) and Trevor (D.B. Woodside)? Below, co-showrunner Rashad Raisani previews what’s coming for all that and more ahead of the September 23 premiere. (Don’t worry: There’s more scoop to come!)
You’re kicking off with this massive, three-episode train derailment. What can you preview about that, and who from the 126 is going to be in the most danger?
Rashad Raisani: It’s the biggest production we’ve ever done on the show with these 15,000 pound or more train cars that we put all over a hillside and we have real explosions and real fire and real water. It’s just some of the coolest stuff that I think has been done on TV in years and it’s almost all practical. This is all real stuff that we’re doing. It’s not a bunch of just CG. So I’m immensely proud of our production team for being able to pull off something that I think is quite spectacular. And in terms of who’s gonna be in the most danger, it’s hard to say because so many of them get put to their extremes. But I guess I would say at the end of the day that the people put in the very most danger would probably be paramedics Tommy, Nancy [Brianna Baker], and T.K. [Ronen Rubinstein].
Kevin Estrada / FOX
You’re also going to be picking up with Owen dealing with his brother’s death. How is he doing?
He is not doing super well, to be honest, and I think he also hasn’t fully processed what happened, which is the whole point of his story when we [pick up]. A year of his life has gone by and he’s just been in this fog, this fog of grief because he lost Gabriel Reyes, who he was gonna be consuegros [co-fathers-in-law] with. He’s killed suddenly. His brother dies under very, let’s say, suspicious circumstances. And Owen feels both a tremendous loss and tremendous guilt about it. And we have a lot more that we’re gonna unpack about what really went down that night. And then Owen lost his best friend Judd because of his son Wyatt’s [Jackson Pace] accident and Judd had to step away from the firehouse. So Owen has really been bereft, and he hasn’t really processed a lot of the feelings because he’s not really great at processing his feelings. He’s just kind of stuck.
Then, of course, to make it worse for him, we decided to give him this dilemma about having to make a decision about which person to pick as his new lieutenant, between Paul [Brian Michael Smith] and Marjan [Natacha Karam]. But now that Owen has gotten so used to people leaving him, he’s afraid at the end of the day that whichever one he doesn’t pick may end up leaving the firehouse. And so he’s just paralyzed. And so we use this train derailment to kind of play out this drama. It’s gonna be the storyline that’s happening while this train derailment is happening.
Judd resigned to take care of Wyatt, who’s now working at dispatch, so Judd needs to figure out what’s going on with his life because he’s not at the 126. What he’s up to and how will we eventually see him back at the 126?
Judd is a guy whose whole life has been—he’s at his best when he has a purpose. His purpose, his life purpose is truly to help people, to be a firefighter. His purpose was to be a good husband to Grace and to be the man that he felt she deserved. His purpose was to be a good father, to take care of this son who for most of that kid’s life, Judd was not even aware he existed, so Judd thought of this as his opportunity to show his son all the love that his kid had missed out on from him in the years they didn’t know each other.
But when we pick Judd up at the top of the season, we sort of methodically have removed every bit of purpose. His son moved out without him. His wife is gone. He doesn’t have his job that he wanted. So we wanted to say, who is Judd when all that purpose is stripped away from him and make him struggle with that—and struggle with it he will, and not just in these first three episodes. There are actually some more sort of subterranean things happening with Judd that get set up in these episodes that carry through to the very end of the series, frankly.
But in terms of how Judd will end up back in the firehouse, what I hope is that, while I think everyone knows that this incredible actor Jim Parrack is not gonna be leaving our show, when we do have him rejoin the firehouse, it’s in a very unexpected way that makes people say, you know what? That’s a surprise, and I think it’s perfect.
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What can you say about how you’re explaining Sierra’s absence and how Judd is handling not having Grace around? Because like you were saying, you took that away from him, too.
The Sierra thing is one that I would say I did not take away from him. I desperately did not want Sierra to leave the show. Even though it didn’t work out to have her back on the show, I still wanted to write a love letter to Sierra McClain, who I love and I love this character who is so central to our show. And so the challenge for us became, how do you explain her absence in a way that honors her character, protects her character as much as we can? But then as we started to examine that, we thought, well, let’s also do it in a way that really allows us to have Judd have a rich story about purpose and loss. And so we decided to just make in many ways that Judd’s most fundamental story this year, is from the minute we met Grace in the prequel episode in Season 2, “Saving Grace,” Judd was kind of flailing in his life before he met Grace and he meets her and he says that she is his center. And so we’re gonna have to see what happens when that center gets removed from him again, whether we liked it or not or whether Judd liked it or not, and play the reality of that. And so that’s gonna be Judd’s season arc this season, is learning how to cope when his center isn’t there and how to be the man that he wants to be.
Will we see Sierra at all this season since it is going to be the end?
No. I wish I had a different answer for you.
You brought up this competition to be the next lieutenant for Marjan and Paul, and the thing is they’re also best friends. What does that mean for what the competition looks like?
Part of what we wanted to play is that in these opening three episodes, as we’re looking at sort of our first movement of the season, and that is the through line, this competition to be the next lieutenant. The first episode is Marjan and Paul are both operating under the illusion that this fundamental desire they have to be the next lieutenant won’t affect their friendship and they’re living under the lie that, oh, this is just no big deal. We’re just best friends, who cares? But of course, the truth is that they both desperately truly care and we’re gonna force them to kind of acknowledge that. So in that first episode, it’s really about them realizing, hey, I want this and this might affect my friendship.
Kevin Estrada / FOX
And the second episode, we’re kind of playing the reality of, I want this, it’s starting to have some, let’s just say, curdling effects on their friendship. It’s starting to have a little bit of a detrimental effect. But in the third episode where we put all of our characters in the most amount of jeopardy, we get to what is most important and what is most true about these people and we’ll show that whoever wins that next lieutenant, no matter what, it’s gonna make their friendship so much stronger for having gone through this gauntlet than it was before it. And it’s gonna reveal just who these people are to each other. That was my hope, is that by the end of this run, no matter who wins, what really wins is that friendship, and for these characters, that’s what’s most important to both of them.
Marriage came up for Tommy and Trevor in the Season 4 finale during the wedding. Is that something that Tommy’s ready for again?
These first episodes are about Tommy exploring that. I think Tommy and Trevor both thought—Trevor was a pastor who got divorced, which is very unusual, and so he, I think, was kind of burned by love and feeling like he was just gonna raise his daughter, do his thing and get to see her out of the house, and then maybe think about love. And I think Tommy is in a very sensitive position still because her husband died suddenly and these little girls lost their dad and now she’s bringing a new man into their lives. And so she was definitely being very cautious about marriage. So I think both of them have to kind of come to grips with and face both the joy of saying, you know what, I’m ready to get married again, but also then the real world consequence and responsibilities that come with getting married when you have children involved, and they both do. We wanted to play kind of that real putting love and what the heart wants versus what’s the right thing to do as a parent and putting those things into some conflict and turmoil. We thought that would be an exciting situation to put them through.
9-1-1: Lone Star, Fifth and Final Season Premiere, Monday, September 23, 8/7c, Fox
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