Shipping two characters in long-running TV shows is not completely unheard of. You’ve got Castiel and Dean in Supernatural, Spike and Buffy, and Zuko and Katara in Avatar: The Last Airbender – there are almost too many to name, and I guarantee you’ve got a few wild headcannons of your own. Let’s talk about the elephant in the firehouse: Eddie Diaz and Evan “Buck” Buckley. For years, fans of 9-1-1 have been hanging onto every lingering glance, every heartfelt exchange, every moment of unspoken tension between these two. And now? The clues are coming in hot and fast.
Sometimes, shipped characters are completely unrealistic – think Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy – but there are other times when directors and writers are deliberately teeing up the union we’ve all been waiting for. For years now, the Buck and Eddie relationship has been at the forefront of 9-1-1 discussions. There are entire threads of Reddit dedicated to it, the TikTok edits rack up millions of views, and I have seen enough 9-1-1 fanfiction on Twitter to last a lifetime.
For the longest time, I thought this was just another delusional ship and that the creators weren’t daring enough to actually follow through. Now, seven years after Buck first sparked that ship by feuding with Eddie – what was essentially a boy pulling a girl’s piggie tales – it might actually be happening. Buck coming out as bisexual was a necessary first step. If you told me in season two that the bro-y f**kboy would come out as a bisexual golden retriever, I would have called you a liar. But here we are. The creators of TV shows are too often afraid to break the status quo, and while people coming to a realisation about their sexuality is seen often in the real world, the same cannot be said of pop culture. Why risk jeprodising a beloved character for the sake of representation, ay?
But in this case, it actually happened. The whole ‘are you in love with your best friend’ storyline Queer people falling for their friends is a common, but tired, aspect of identity to see on a TV show. At this point, we’ve seen it a dozen times, both in real life and on screen. However, I question why they’d even introduce this storyline if there wasn’t some kind of payoff. Why bring Tommy back into Buck’s life after their messy breakup if it wasn’t to kick off Buck and Eddie eventually getting together?
Ryan Guzman and Oliver Stark are totally for Eddie and Buck in 9-1-1
Look, the actors don’t necessarily have to be on board for a storyline; after all, they are there to do a job, and the writers and directors ultimately decide the progression. But it sure does help, and Buck and Eddie’s actors seem more than ready to broach the topic. “We’re closer than ever this season; I can only really tease that,” Eddie’s actor, Ryan Guzman, said on the red carpet. “There are a lot of changes in the relationship, in how we interact, and all those things. We are trying to give the audience what they want.”
Oliver Stark, who plays Buck, admitted to crying in the shower over the TikTok edits, explaining: “If they ended up taking Ryan’s character in that direction, and it feels right for the story, I’m always open to it. “I’m always open to whatever feels like is the right path for these characters. I think you can’t ever do it for those reasons. If you’re going to do it, it has to be because the story dictates that it should move in that direction. If that does end up being the case, then of course. Yeah. I’m all for it.”
