Primetime is packed with action thanks to the return of both 9-1-1: Lone Star on Fox and 9-1-1 on ABC in the fall 2024 television schedule. Lone Star’s end isn’t far off, though, as the show will end after its fifth and final 12-episode season. There’s currently another 9-1-1 spinoff in the works to join the original show on ABC, which only reminds me of what Lone Star executive producer Rashad Raisani told CinemaBlend about the Season 5 ending. New 9-1-1 Spinoff The impending end of Fox’s 9-1-1 property doesn’t mean ABC’s half of the franchise can’t expand. Another show set in the 9-1-1 universe is in development at ABC, with two of the original series’ co-creators attached. Ryan Murphy broke the news to Variety, saying: Tim Minear and I are doing a new spinoff that we’re actually writing and we’re hoping to air next fall… So now we’re launching a new show in a new city that I can’t name, but it’s exciting. And ‘9-1-1′ moved to ABC and suddenly became, I think, the biggest show on Thursday nights. They’re obviously interested in that, so we’re giving them another show that I really like.
Only time will tell what the “new city” Ryan Murphy is referring to is, but I’d like to see if it’s closer to 9-1-1’s Los Angeles than Lone Star’s Austin so that it could be easier to integrate than when the two original shows were on Fox. (Both are currently streaming with a Hulu subscription.) The new project has not been ordered to series as of press time, so it’s unclear whether it will actually air in primetime. I can’t help but find this news bittersweet, given that 9-1-1: Lone Star has been killed.
9-1-1: Lone Star executive producer on Season 5 Lone Star co-executive producer/executive producer Rashad Raisani spoke to CinemaBlend ahead of the fifth and final season, admitting that “there were signs” of the cancellation before it was officially announced. The team wasn’t notified until after filming on Season 5 had already wrapped, with no regular cast members returning, meaning the series’ current ending isn’t firmly planned as the end of the story for Owen and co.
I asked Raisani how proud he was that Season 5 served as a finale for the Lone Star cast despite not being designed that way, and he shared: I’m incredibly proud. I feel like the actors this season have all given it their all, and I think they’ve given it their all. Maybe because they’ve been together longer, they’ve gone deeper into their characters, we’ve been able to think about them more deeply because we’ve had a long gap between seasons, but they’ve just come to a place that I think is beautiful to see.
Season 5 certainly got off to an exciting start, and the first two episodes set up a major trainwreck while Owen was still struggling to choose Judd’s replacement. Based on Rashad Raisani’s comments, those two episodes were just the beginning of a “beautiful” finale. He continued: Each of these episodes has what I hope people will see as a very poetic and fitting ending for their characters. For better or worse, for whatever you want to say, they all end on authentic journeys. And I think all of their journeys continue when the show ends. Only in the event that we get an 11th-hour lifeline, their journeys can continue, but if not, I think we end them in a place where I’m really proud of where we left all of these people when we left them.
An 11th-hour redemption doesn’t seem likely at this point, but it does seem promising that the series won’t end by ending all of these characters’ journeys. Who knows? Maybe some of them could move to the mysterious location of ABC’s potential spinoff starring Ryan Murphy and Tim Minear and join that cast. For now, I’m just glad to hear that the executive producer is very proud of what’s becoming the finished product of Lone Star.
