Yahoo Lifestyle 9-1-1: Lone Star Boss Explains Those Series Finale Time Jump Twists, Including Who Almost Didn’t Survive
9-1-1: Lone Star went out in a blaze of glory Monday as the 126 rallied to save Austin from a nuclear meltdown triggered by the debris of a giant asteroid. Just another day at the office for this crew, really.
The series finale was everything that 9-1-1: Lone Star fans have come to expect from the first responder circus, an explosive hour of heroic highs and devastating lows. At one point, just when all seemed lost, the 126 was simply waiting for death in a big group hug, like the incinerator scene in Toy Story 3 — only with real people.
More from TVLine
Following a few (extremely egregious) fake-outs, a five-month time jump revealed that all is now well for the 126 — and we do mean everyone. Judd takes over as the station’s new captain, Jonah is living his best life with Carlos and “papa-bro” T.K. (a nickname we need to change immediately), Marjan is pregnant with her and Joe’s first baby, Mateo staved off his deportation, and Tommy is cancer-free! As for Owen, well… we’ll get to him later.
9-1-1’s Next Spinoff: Everything We Know
“I really wanted a full-circle feeling with this finale,” showrunner Rashad Raisani tells TVLine. “I looked back a lot at the pilot of the show. Owen and T.K. came to the 126 because the house had been through this terrible tragedy, T.K. just had an overdose and almost died, and Owen had lung cancer. They came to this place to heal the firehouse and to heal themselves, and that’s why I thought, well, let’s just say that everybody got healed.”
Read on for more of Raisani’s thoughts about 9-1-1: Lone Star‘s final hour, including what we would have seen in a sixth season (or even a spinoff), as well as the thought process behind where everyone — including Owen — ended up:
Verizon to the Rescue!
When the impact from the asteroid knocked out cell service for half the city, Wyatt and his fellow dispatchers were in a real pickle — that is, until Verizon’s Tactical Humanitarian Operations Response vehicle (aka T.H.O.R., aka “best name ever!”) showed up to save the day, providing a 5G signal to send the first responders where help was needed.
Though there was clearly an element of product placement to all of this, Raisani says, “It was a story point. We were going to do that anyway, so it fit perfectly with where our characters were.”
“In times of tragedy, when first responders need to be able to communicate with each other and for whatever reason the infrastructure is down, it’s exactly what they’re designed to do,” Raisani says. “When the fires happened here in L.A., I was just thinking, gosh, I’m sure the one that we had on the show is somewhere out here right now.”
T.K.’s Sacrifice
The time jump was very good to T.K. and Carlos, who apparently used the time to convince their social worker that they would make excellent guardians to little Jonah. Unfortunately, this required T.K. to take step away from the too-dangerous career that once threatened to keep this adoption from happening.
“It certainly wasn’t a quick decision,” Raisani says of making T.K. a stay-at-home dad. “It was about showing the love and sacrifice that he was willing to make to be a father. He would do anything to adopt Jonah, including give up something that he loved very much.”
Raisani reminds us that this follows the same line of thought T.K. has been expressing all season. He was willing to choose Jonah over Carlos, back when his husband wasn’t sure that he wanted a child, so it should come as no surprise that he’s willing to choose Jonah over his career.
“Now, if we had a spinoff or another season, we would have found a way to get him back to being a paramedic, since he’s so great at that,” Raisani says. “But I really wanted to show that at the end of the day, when it’s a choice between your career or the love that you have for this little boy, which would you choose?”
Marjan’s Historic Pregnancy
It was fun enough to see a super-pregnant Marjan in the flash forward, revealing that she and Joe are expecting their first child together, but it becomes even more meaningful when you remember that she’s actually the first firefighter in the 9-1-1 franchise to get pregnant. Both of the previous pregnancies, Maddie on 9-1-1 and Grace on 9-1-1: Lone Star, were dispatchers.
“What a great storyline that would have been,” Raisani tells TVLine of potentially getting to see a pregnant Marjan in action. “We would have done it. Now I’m feeling even worse, because we really have never done a pregnant firefighter. How do you juggle the risk? How do you juggle the physical changes, and then when you’re a new mom and have to work and be away from the kid? It would have been delicious, I have to say.”
Judd’s Destiny
With Owen no longer running the 126, a new captain is needed to guide the ship — and what better choice than Judd, whose promotion ceremony served as one of the series’ final scenes?
“This was always the final destination for Judd, but I can promise that it would have been a different journey to get there if Grace had been around,” Raisani tells TVLine. “So many of the story points that we ended up telling about Judd would have gone in a different direction. But one way or another, Judd’s destiny was always to be in this chair. We would have found different ways to have him go through the crucibles of life to show that he’s incredibly flawed, yet resilient and humble.”
Judd’s humility, Raisani explains, “makes him the perfect leader by the time he’s ready to take that chair.”
Mateo’s Last Stand
Even though Nancy could have easily married Mateo, ensuring that he could remain in the country regardless of his DACA status, Raisani says it was more important for him to find another way to beat the system.
“There are two issues going on — one is his DACA status, and the other is their emotional relationship status,” Raisani explains to TVLine. “I really wanted him to end up respecting and accepting that she has this strong conviction about marriage. It may sound trivial to other people, but it’s very important and fundamental to her. It’s about where she comes from and who she grew up as.”
Mateo convinced the judge to let him stay by recounting the lives he’s saved and sacrifices he’s made for the good of the country that’s trying to eject him. He also totally pulled an Owen, informing the judge that if that isn’t good enough, she can “kiss my ass.” It was effective, though definitely not recommended.
“I wrote it as a reflection of a line Owen had earlier this season when he was in a showdown with the mayor of Austin [over healthcare], but the way Julian [Works] played it, you can immediately see on his face that he knows he went too far,” Raisani says. “It didn’t sound the same coming out of Owen’s mouth as it did coming out of his.”
Tommy’s Miraculous Recovery
Despite appearing to slip away last week, Tommy rose from the dead (or at least from the couch) to help save her city in its darkest hour. Even better, a follow-up appointment with her doctor in the flash forward revealed that she is officially in remission! But is it fair to call this a miracle, or is it just modern science at work?
“We were told this is a thing that happens commonly when people get into immunotherapy,” Raisani explains. “Sometimes they have follow-up appointments where they think everything’s going well, but suddenly it’s like, oh my goodness, these tumors are all huge. It can be that they’re actually swelling up right before they disappear because they’re being attacked by the immune system. So, yes, there is an element of the miraculous about it, but one that is born of of something people really go through and experience.”
Hey, you won’t hear us complaining about Tommy surviving the finale, miracle or not.
“To be honest, I never was going to kill Tommy,” Raisani admits. “When Tommy was getting cancer, I told Gina, ‘We’re doing this to show how treacherous this journey is and how much havoc it wreaks on your life. But we’ve visited enough tragedy. This diagnosis is a tragedy in itself. No, we’re not taking away the mother of your two little girls. We’re not going to do that to Tommy.’”
Owen’s ‘Higher Calling’
And then there’s Owen. The show did everything it could to make us think that he didn’t survive the finale’s nuclear meltdown, complete with ominous statements about it feeling odd that he’s “not here anymore.” As it turns out, he couldn’t attend Judd’s promotion ceremony because he was too busy running the NYFD from his cushy Manhattan office.
Raisani tells TVLine that he did consider killing off Rob Lowe’s character, “but ended up deciding that it was enough of a kick in the stomach that this show was ending at all, so I just wanted to leave people with a sense of joy and that life goes on.”
“I really wanted a full-circle feeling,” he says. “The fundamental thing for me was to leave people with hope and a smile at the end, not feeling bummed and depressed. It’s bittersweet because the family sort of went their separate ways, but not because people were dead or people got divorced. Life separated them in a beautiful way where they’re all following a higher calling.”
Was the series finale of 9-1-1: Lone Star everything you hoped it would be? What did you love? What would you have changed? Grade the episode in our poll below, then drop a comment with your full review.
Best of TVLine
Sign up for TVLine's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
