‘9-1-1: Lone Star’ Chief on Married Tarlos, Writing Grace Off and Plans for Series Finale Emergency: ‘We’re Going “Last of Us” With a Little “Chernobyl”‘
SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “Both Sides, Now,“ the Season 5 premiere of Fox’s “9-1-1: Lone Star.”
As we go on, we remember all the good times we’ve had with the 126 — and they aren’t over just yet. While Fox has confirmed that “9-1-1: Lone Star” will be concluding with its fifth season, the end is still a while away — the “9-1-1” spinoff just debuted its final season premiere Monday, after more than a year off the air.
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In the episode, titled “Both Sides, Now,” the 126 begins its end dealing with a hijacked armored truck ahead of what will be a massive derailed train emergency over three episodes. Meanwhile, newly minted Texas Ranger Carlos (Rafael Silva) is learning the ropes while balancing his married life with T.K. (Ronen Rubinstein) with the young couple having been married for nearly a year following a time jump since their wedding in the Season 4 finale. He’s also spent all this time trying to solve his father’s murder.
Owen (Rob Lowe) is turning to Tommy (Gina Torres) to deal with his brother Robert’s death all while having to pick a replacement for Judd (Jim Parrack), who has left the 126 during the time skip, and both Marjan (Natacha Karam) and Paul (Brian Michael Smith) vying for the open lieutenant position. Following the exit of “9-1-1: Lone Star” actress Sierra McClain ahead of the final season, her character, Judd’s wife Grace, has been written off as doing missionary work and Judd’s son Wyatt (Jackson Pace) has taken over Grace’s role as the show’s anchor in the call center.
Here to break down the premiere and plans for the rest of the fifth and final season of “9-1-1: Lone Star,” including an “apocalyptic” series finale, with Variety is co-showrunner Rashad Raisani.
How did you decide to do the time jump going into the final season? Was it affected by the actual wait for “Lone Star” to come back since Season 4 ended in May 2023?
I think that was actually the primary factor. It had been a year in real life, and we just thought it’d be strange to pretend like this gap in time hadn’t really happened in people’s lives. And I think the other thing that factored in was that we just thought it would be a great opportunity to advance people’s lives in big ways, so that we could hit people with fresh, big surprises. You’re kind of catching up to them. And some of the pleasures of the first episode are going, oh, wait, what is Carlos doing these days? And has Owen gotten over all the things that happened a long time ago? And where is Judd in his life? And Wyatt was able to rehabilitate his injury to the extent that he’s able to? To be honest, it put us in a position, once we had a sense that this might be the last season, that we could really put everybody on the runway to get where we wanted them to get to possibly end the series.
I was bummed that meant we missed out on newlywed Tarlos. How much will you still show of those early days of marriage?
I like to think the joys that Carlos and T.K. are going to have are going to come from an even deeper place now, because their world has had some real pain in it — Carlos’ father getting murdered — and that also creates weight on their relationship. As much as I want it to always feel like it’s a light, carefree, problem-free existence that they have, which they totally deserve, in the real world, life doesn’t work that way. Even when you’re in an incredibly loving, committed relationship, life still finds ways to kick you in the stomach, and sometimes that can affect your relationship. But what I think makes their relationship so beautiful is that it keeps emerging stronger from these challenges and from these pressures. And I hope that the joys that you get when you see these guys persevere through some of the things they’re going to go through as a couple, that it will play on an even more beautiful level than it would be to see them be completely easygoing and be able to just enjoy each other’s company without any real sweat from the real world.
Carlos is featured prominently in the premiere following his promotion to Texas Ranger, and the episode closes with the reveal he is heavily investigating his father’s murder in his spare time. What plans do you have for him this season outside of his relationship with T.K.?
For Carlos, this has been brewing and bubbling for a year, this obsession, and it hasn’t gone away at all. If anything, it just continues to metastasize, what he’s dealing with. And Carlos can’t just pick up his investigation and advance it every week, because that’s not how real cases work. So he has to just sit with it until some things start to open up for him that we’ll get to. But that obsession never goes away, and every single scene he plays, it’s there. This is the season where you see the man who Carlos is going to become. I hope it’s not for the last time, but as we say goodbye to him and to T.K. and to all these characters who I love, you see who this man is going to become as the sun starts to set on this show. Having to find his father’s killer, him becoming his own man as a Texas Ranger, as a husband, that was all part of the recipe of what we wanted to do with him.
How early on in writing and shooting did you know this would be the final season?
Even before the strikes, the writing was on the wall about “9-1-1: Lone Star,” because of [“9-1-1″/”Lone Star” studio] 20th Television getting purchased by Disney, and the contract cycle of “9-1-1,” it ended in a way that allowed “9-1-1” to more more seamlessly move over to ABC, and ours did not line up so cleanly. So we knew it was going to be difficult to ever get through that. I’m not a contractual lawyer, so I can’t say all the ins and outs of why it was going to be difficult, and just how difficult, but the writing was pretty clearly on the wall that it would be hard for the show to go past Season 5 because of just nuts-and-bolts numbers that these two companies we’re dealing with.
That said, I still have never given up my hope against hope that there is some spark that it could work. So we knew that going forward that that was our reality. It was uphill, but my feeling was always, I want to end this series in a way that gives you a beautiful sense of a journey and close for these characters — but doesn’t necessarily mean it couldn’t have new life, if by some bounce of the ball, that was able to happen. But I did want it, just in case, and assuming that it would be our last, I really wanted to give us that last episode to make people feel like, OK I got to know these people, and I feel like I’m leaving these people in a better place, where I’ve watched them grow up.
Sierra McClain left the show ahead of Season 5, and you had to find a way to write off her character Grace. Why did Sierra exit and how did you come up with the way you’d write out Grace, leaving behind her job as call center operator and her husband Judd and young daughter?
I’ve been electing to let Sierra speak for her side of that story, but I can just tell you my side of my experience of it, which is Sierra is the soul of “Lone Star,” and she is so central to what the show is all about, that I didn’t ever want to think about doing the show without her. And for a minute, it looked like it might work out and even two or three weeks before production, we thought there was a chance, and then it just ended up not being in the cards. So it forced us to have to pivot and it was very difficult. I felt it was critical to both protect the character of Grace and actress Sierra McClain — I adore both of them. The challenge was, how do you explain her absence in a way it doesn’t involve just sort of mindless killing her off, which I think would have just been a travesty, or doing something like, she left Judd, divorced him, or something kind of gross like that, which I think nobody would believe. So that became our challenge as to how to explain it away, or at least explain it to level that we could continue the show. And I’ll let the audience decide if we did, I think we did. We also made that loss of our show Judd’s story and I think that ended up leading to a very beautiful arc that takes us through our entire fifth season, especially for Judd. I like to think that we at least found a tiny silver lining out of that big loss.
Is there any chance we might get a back-for-the-finale moment? It’s going to be really hard to see Judd’s story end without Grace there.
I agree. Unfortunately, we’ve already shot it. I held out hope until the last minute, I’ll put it that way. I do think that, without seeing her on screen, how satisfying could anything be? But short of that, I’m just immensely proud of where the show goes. I just believe in the way the show ends so deeply that I think people are gonna feel like, wow, it couldn’t have ended in any other way.
What can you tease about the rest of the final season, and how you chose to end the series?
Just teasing out the season, obviously we have this big train derailment and the gas leak. But then we’re also going to have a lot of fun this year. To me, the fun of this show was watching this fish out of water Rob Lowe, who started out born in Santa Monica and grew up in New York. He’s just urbane and he has skin care products and hair care products and all these things. And I felt to see him go a little more cowboy this season would be a really fun thing. So we have some emergencies that reflect that, more of the Old West, we do some crazy stuff with horses. Then we’re going to see some crazy Texas Rangers cases that are just darker and more terrifying than anything we’ve done in years. And then, as far as the end of the show and the end emergency, the thing I would say is it’s apocalyptic, in every sense of the word. I think people will actually be like, “Oh my god, I can’t believe they went that apocalyptic at the end.” We wanted to match the way it felt to us writing that last episode to watch it, so that it isn’t just the end of the world for our characters and for us — the people who worked on the show that we were so proud of — it’s also the end of the world, possibly, for all the viewers as well.
So we’re going “The Last of Us” in the finale?
Let’s just say we’re going “The Last of Us” with a little “Chernobyl.”
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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