How will Sgt. Athena Grant-Nash (Angela Bassett) and the LAPD’s Station 118 recover — and, ultimately, move on — from the tragic loss of Capt. Bobby Nash (Peter Krause)? That is the question on everyone’s lips heading into the ninth season of 9-1-1, which launches this fall on ABC.
For eight seasons, the first-responders of television’s most outlandish procedural drama have weathered just about every natural and man-made disaster, but most of them had never undergone a personal tragedy quite like losing one of their own in the line of duty. With Bobby now well and truly gone, the surviving characters must lean on each other and chart a path forward without him, starting with filling his chair at the 118.
Everything you need for fall TV:
9-1-1 Season 9 release date
The new season of 9-1-1 will premiere on Thursday, Oct. 9 at 8/7c on ABC and stream the next day on Hulu. Like the two previous seasons, the venerable first-responder drama will headline ABC’s coveted Thursday night line-up, which was once famously occupied entirely by Shonda Rhimes’ production company. This fall, 9-1-1 will air at 8/7c, new spinoff 9-1-1: Nashville will debut at 9/8c, and Rhimes’ last remaining ABC show, the long-running stalwart Grey’s Anatomy, will serve as the night cap at 10/9c. You can see ABC’s full fall schedule right here.
Where is the 9-1-1 trailer?
Unlike other ABC dramas airing this fall, 9-1-1 has still yet to release a full trailer. However, the network has released a couple of surreal teasers that have really gotten people talking. We’ll let you watch them for yourself. They need to be seen to be believed.
Wait, is 9-1-1 really going to space?
The posters and teasers you’ve probably already seen on social media weren’t deceiving you: Athena and Hen (Aisha Hinds) are really going to outer space. Of course, that begs the question: Where is Hen’s rocket scientist wife Karen (Tracie Thoms) amidst all of this?!
What happened at the end of 9-1-1 Season 8?
Earlier this year, co-creator and showrunner Tim Minear decided to kill off his first 9-1-1 main character: Krause’s Robert Wade Nash, the fire captain who had helped build the 118 from the ground up after suffering unimaginable personal loss, getting sober, and finding love again with Athena. In Episode 15, titled “Lab Rats,” Bobby died after being exposed to a lethal strain of CCHF during a lab explosion, which compromised his protective suit and allowed the virus to enter his system. He kept his infection a secret to ensure his team received the single dose of antidote, making a final sacrifice to save Chimney’s (Kenneth Choi) life before succumbing to the virus himself.
The final three episodes of Season 8 found newly widowed Athena and the remaining members of the 118 — including former member Eddie Diaz (Ryan Guzman), who had recently moved back to El Paso to reconnect with his teenage son, Christopher (Gavin McHugh) — grieving and reeling from losing the center of their personal and professional lives.
In the finale, fittingly titled “Seismic Shifts,” Athena and the firefighters and paramedics of the 118 were dispatched to a mass casualty event after a high-rise apartment building collapsed and left potentially hundreds of inhabitants trapped under the rubble. Eddie, who had been planning to head back to Texas with Chris after Bobby’s funeral, joined the scene in his turnout gear, ultimately saving Buck (Oliver Stark) and Ravi (Anirudh Pisharody) from a precarious situation with a crumbling structure by making an impromptu zipline.
Meanwhile, Athena and Chimney got trapped while treating multiple critically injured victims on the ground floor of the apartment building. One of the victims, Graham, aka the infamous cart cop from earlier in the season, was revealed to be seriously injured by impalement but was hiding it to ensure his neighbor was saved — a moment that tragically mirrors Bobby’s heroic sacrifice. Refusing to accept another death, Chimney managed to save Graham’s life. This act helped mend the rift between Athena and Chimney, as Athena recognized the bravery in both sacrifices and told Chimney that Bobby would be proud of him.
Back at the firehouse, Chimney delivered an impassioned speech, stopping both Buck’s transfer to another station and Eddie’s impending move to Texas — and seemingly making himself the clear favorite to succeed Bobby as captain of the 118.
In the epilogue, the fates of all the main characters were revealed:
Is Bobby really dead?
Yes, as much as viewers hated the choice to kill him off, Bobby is still dead. But Minear — who famously worked on beloved genre series such as Angel, The X-Files and American Horror Story — has always loved a good ghost story, so there is always a chance that ghost Bobby could make a guest appearance every once in a while.
What else do you know about 9-1-1 Season 9?
Minear has described the next installment of the original 9-1-1 as “The Season of Perpetual Grappling.” “When one piece as pivotal as Bobby is taken away, everything shifts: partnerships change, roles change, and people have to discover something within themselves that maybe they didn’t know they had,” the showrunner told Entertainment Weekly in his first major interview since killing off Bobby. “And that really is a major theme of the first part of the season.”
Here are the confirmed episode titles from the WGA website:
Season 9, Episode 1: “Eat the Rich”
Synopsis: “In honor of Bobby Nash’s sacrifice, the 118 comes together to dedicate the firehouse in his memory. Meanwhile, when a billionaire tech giant is involved in a life-or-death emergency, the team must race to his aid.”
Here’s what we do know about the episode: After his impassioned speech in the finale, Chimney has assumed the role of the 118’s captain (for now). The billionaire tech giant will be played by Mark Consuelos, and he will be swallowed by a whale. (Yes, really.)
Season 9, Episode 2: “Spiraling”
Season 9, Episode 3: “The Sky Is Falling”
By the end of the third episode, Minear told EW, Athena will have another connection to the 118. All signs seem to point to Harry joining the firehouse in memory of his late stepfather — a decision that will put him at odds with his mother and leave his sister stuck in the middle.
“My character’s son, Harry, recently made a potentially life-altering decision about his education and identity. And my own son, who just finished his first year of college, came home and said, ‘Mom, I’m grown,'” Bassett told The Healthy of the parallels between her and Athena’s lives in an interview published in August. “So whether it’s my television son or my real son at 19, they both think they’re completely grown and that every decision they make is the right one. I keep reminding them — your brain doesn’t fully mature until at least 25. Now I’ve even heard 30 for boys! But I’ll give them 25. Until then, check in with mom and dad before making life-altering decisions.”
Season 9, Episode 4: “Reentry”
Season 9, Episode 5: “Day of the Dead”
“It really opened up for me just some great possibilities for Eddie and I’m really excited about that one,” Minear teased to EW about this episode, which is supposed to center around el Día de Los Muertos. “Buck is quick to believe things, but Eddie might be quick to believe things now too. I know he always sort of poo-pooed those things, and kind of walked away from his faith, but I think there may be a spiritual awakening in Eddie’s future.”
Is “Buddie” going canon?
Your guess is as good as ours! Stark and Guzman are well-aware that a sizable subset of 9-1-1 fans have been clamouring for Buck and Eddie to cross the line from platonic to romantic for years. For the first time in the seven seasons that Buck has known Eddie, Buck’s sister Maddie and his ex-boyfriend Tommy (Lou Ferrigno Jr.) explicitly questioned whether he had romantic feelings for his best friend last season, but Minear has danced around the topic for years. Could this finally be the season that the showrunner leans into the natural chemistry between two of the show’s fan-favorite characters, or could this be the season that he shuts down any possibility of that happening?
9-1-1 Season 9 cast
With the exception of Krause, the rest of 9-1-1‘s main cast has returned for Season 9:
Fun fact: By the end of the ninth season of 9-1-1, which will bring the total number of episodes to 142, Hewitt — who joined the series at the start of Season 2 — will have played Maddie longer than she has played any other character. Hewitt will soon surpass her 120 episodes as Sarah Reeves Merrin on Party of Five and her short-lived spinoff Time of Your Life, as well as her 107 episodes as Melinda Gordon on Ghost Whisperer.
To make up for Bobby’s absence, 9-1-1 producers have chosen to promote Athena’s children, May (Corinne Massiah) and Harry (Elijah M. Cooper), to series regulars for Season 9. Anirudh Pisharody will also continue to recur as firefighter Ravi Panikkar.
This marks a return to series regular status for Massiah, who recurred in Season 1 before a regular stint in Seasons 2-5. (In Seasons 4 and 5, after watching her mother and stepfather heroically save lives as first-responders, May chose to work as a 9-1-1 dispatcher alongside Maddie.) Massiah then stepped back to guest star/recurring as her character attended USC while Massiah herself was a full-time student at UCLA. She graduated earlier this year with a degree in sociology and will now be back on 9-1-1 full-time.
The role of Harry was originated by Marcanthonee Reis, who appeared in Seasons 1-5. After Reis opted not to return, the role was recast with Cooper in Season 7.
Previous coverage of 9-1-1
Ahead of the new season, check out TV Guide’s past coverage of 9-1-1 on ABC:
Season 7
Season 8
Where to watch 9-1-1
All seasons of 9-1-1 are now streaming on Hulu in the U.S. and on Disney+ internationally.
