The fifth and final season of 9-1-1: Lone Star is set to premiere on Fox in 2024 after a year-long delay, the departure of a star, and a major crisis along the way with a train derailment. Unlike when 9-1-1 was canceled and then picked up by ABC to move channels, it seems there’s no such salvation in store for the Texas-set spinoff series. CinemaBlend spoke with Lone Star co-executive producer and CEO Rashad Raisani about the upcoming finale, and he was candid about what it was like to receive the cancellation news.
While Season 5 will have time to introduce some adversity for Tarlos, only a total of twelve episodes have been produced for 9-1-1: Lone Star’s final season. After admitting that the storyline of Grace leaving Judd was “unbelievable,” Raisani had this to say when I asked how far along the season the team was when they got word that the end was near: To be honest, we didn’t know. I have to say it wasn’t official until I saw a trailer a few weeks ago on Fox. It said ‘final season.’ That’s when it became official to me. That was after we finished. That was the official aspect of it. In terms of the writing on the wall, the writing on the wall was even before the strike, because when we finished Season 4, we knew that we were going into the final season of this contract between Disney and Fox.
Obviously, the Season 5 finale wasn’t planned to be the series finale, because the show was finished before the official news of the cancellation. That said, Lone Star’s impending demise isn’t a surprise to the group following the WGA writers’ strike and the SAG-AFTRA actors’ strike at the end of 2023. The executive producer continued: We knew that the ability of particular shows like ours, which have a pretty big budget — especially in the current climate, because we have big action, we have big casts — we knew that it would be a challenge, and probably an insurmountable challenge, to bring the show back. When we’re owned by Disney and we’re on Fox, just from a financial, metrics, pure business standpoint, it just doesn’t make sense for those two companies to work together to continue to do this.
9-1-1: Lone Star certainly has a large cast, and Sierra McClain’s departure doesn’t really reduce the cast. Wyatt was set to have an increased presence in the Season 5 premiere (which you can stream with a Hulu subscription), and Suburgatory’s Parker Young joined the cast to play a character important to Carlos’ story.
Plus, the episodes don’t become “like short films,” Rob Lowe said, without a big budget behind them, and the cast numbers didn’t match up between Disney and Fox for Lone Star’s sixth season. Rashad Raisani noted that the business situation was different when the show was in planning stages in 2019, saying: Whereas if we were at the same studio network as when the show first started — before the Disney merger, it was Fox’s 20th show when it was conceived — there probably would have been more avenues to explore if we were in that situation.
9-1-1: Lone Star finally premiered in early 2020, just months before the entertainment industry more or less shut down due to COVID-19. It was less than a year after the merger between Disney and 21st Century Fox was officially announced. On the record, the show has overcome some major obstacles, including COVID-19 and strikes.
Rashad Raisani confirmed that he is “extremely proud” of the finished product of Season 5, and all signs point to an exciting final series of episodes. See what’s in store for the characters in the final season of 9-1-1: Lone Star on Monday at 8 p.m. ET on Fox, before the freshman series Rescue: HI-Surf at 9 p.m. ET. You can also catch up on previous seasons of Lone Star streaming on Hulu right now.
