9-1-1 just suffered the biggest lost it could, and somehow, the show must move on, with three more episodes set to air this season. But how will the 118 move on without its captain, Bobby Nash (Peter Krause)? First of all, it won’t be replacing him at the firehouse permanently just yet. Hen (Aisha Hinds) has stepped in as interim captain in the past, when Bobby’s been out, and the captain, as he died, told Buck (Oliver Stark) that the others are going to need him. There’s also the possibility of someone new coming in. How the show will handle that “will be answered in Season 9,” showrunner Tim Minear tells TV Insider.
You’ve been there through every fire, every explosion, and every tear-streaked rescue with Bobby Nash, right? So the rumors swirling about his possible exit in Season 8 of ‘9-1-1’ are like a 5-alarm fire for fans. Let’s take a deep dive into what we actually know, what’s pure speculation, and what showrunner Tim Minear had to say about that teased finale emergency.
That gives the 118 time to grieve and accept what’s happened. “I’m not solving that problem right away for the rest of this season. There is an interim captain there who is not going to be the captain going forward, but the last three episodes are not about who’s in Bobby’s chair. The last three episodes are about that chair is empty,” says the EP. It’s nearly impossible to imagine the firefighters going back to work, even though they have to, after Bobby’s death, “That’s why I felt like I needed a run of episodes to let that breathe,” Minear explains. “Every episode [through the finale] is about this.”
These upcoming episodes will see the rest of the 118 both “leaning on each other” as well as “kind of fractured at the same time” in their grief, he says, with “all the stages of grief represented.” That includes survivor’s guilt for Chimney (Kenneth Choi), whom Bobby used the only dose of the anti-viral on even though at that point he knew he, too, had been infected with the deadly super-strain of CCHF (Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever). Buck, meanwhile, after Bobby told him he’d be okay and the others would need him, will try to “lean on himself,” according to Minear. “That’s going to confuse Buck. He’s not going to quite know what to do with that. Everyone’s going to be just a little off their equilibrium in these last three.” He will eventually open up to everyone in some way.
It’s hard to imagine where the ABC drama will go for its last episode of the season after the traumatic two-parter of Episodes 14 and 15, but the showrunner promises “a real 9-1-1 emergency finale” after a “fun conceit,” something “we haven’t really done before,” for the penultimate episode. That leads “to a mass casualty event,” Minear previews. “Even in their grief, they’re first responders, they got to put that aside and work together to save people. So I think what you’ll see in the last three episodes, yes, grief, love, loss, sadness, and rallying and victory.”
In those episodes, we will see Eddie (Ryan Guzman), who moved to Texas to be closer to his son, back in Los Angeles, but we’ll have to see if he sticks around permanently. We’ll also see Krause as Bobby again, though Minear wouldn’t say how — there are always flashbacks, dreams, and hallucinations to see a dead character again.
