9-1-1 Showrunner Teases “Repercussions” for Buck After Harrowing 9-1-1 Season Episode 13

Sometimes 9-1-1 breaks the mold and delivers an hour you may not see coming.

Past seasons have featured “Begins” episodes that explore the backstories of our central characters, offering deeper insight into the first responders we know today.

We’ve also seen thriller-style installments that push characters to their limits, as 9-1-1 has been prone to do throughout its reign.

9-1-1 Season 9 Episode 13 unfolded in the New Mexico desert with Buck and Eddie front and center in a high-stakes thriller.

Stuck in Nashville after the Firefighter Games, Buck and Eddie took to the open highway to get back to Los Angeles, but it was far from smooth sailing.

After a stop at a diner to get directions leads to a small disagreement, the story escalates as a terrifying car accident follows, setting the stage for a kidnapping: Buck is held against his will by a former couple seeking to replace their comatose son.

It was an emotionally taxing yet gripping hour, with a final act that was devastating and haunting in the best of ways.

The hour was a Buck and Eddie showcase, sending the longtime best friends through the horrors of a road trip gone disastrously wrong. And hours highlighting the fan-favorite pair’s effortless chemistry are always a welcome treat.

For showrunner Tim Minear, who also wrote the episode, the hour’s origins began with getting Buck and Eddie back from Nashville.

“So, it all sort of comes down to the crossover, right?” Tim told us in our exclusive conversation.

“We were sending Buck and Eddie out to Nashville. And when we were working on episode 11, which is not really a two-part crossover, but the lead-up to the crossover, I got excited about the idea that Bobby was the one who submitted Buck and Eddie for the competition.

“And that Eddie wasn’t even working in Los Angeles at the time. So, as Buck surmised, Bobby had faith that, at some point, gravity would take over, the family would come back together, and Eddie would be back. So that excited me initially.

“Then after we did the crossover, I thought, this is an opportunity to continue this idea with Buck and Eddie. And so that’s sort of where the idea came from.”

Family, both blood and found, is a central theme in 9-1-1, and Bobby’s death in 9-1-1 Season 8 was a monumental moment for the series, and it’s been explored in various ways throughout 9-1-1 Season 9.

Minear has taken steps to ensure the characters have had space to talk about Bobby’s death and its impact.

“This season, I’ve been trying to give every character a moment to express the hole in their life after Bobby’s death,” he explained. “And if you sort of track the season, you’ll see that everybody’s had a little something, except for Buck.

“So, this felt to me like, without hitting the audience over the head with an anvil, the opportunity to tell a story where Buck could express something about him feeling like he’s starting to lose himself a little bit without Bobby. And I just nested it into this thriller story and this abduction story.

“I think it may have been James Leffler and Molly Green who suggested ‘Misery’ as a touchstone for the episode, and I just took that and ran with it.”

The buildup to Buck’s abduction begins with lighter, more playful moments between Buck and Eddie, capturing road-trip vibes with loud music and snacks.

This atmosphere gradually shifts as they veer off course and become lost in the desert, signaling a change in tone.

Buck and Eddie play off each other so well in the earlier beats of the episode, until goodwill gives way to tension. Was that boiling over just the result of being cooped up in a car for hours on end?

Or was it the product of something deeper within their relationship, and that butting of heads that can come with being close with somebody for a long time?

“I think you nailed it,” Minear answered when asked those very questions. “I mean, the trick was something like this, and I’m just going to do what I usually do with you, which is I’m going to show you the sausage factory, why I make the choices I make.

“This story doesn’t really start until the car crash. So, what you have is a whole first act that is just set-up, where you have to get the pieces arranged on the board so the story can take off. That could be deadly dull unless it feels like the story is about something in the moment,” Minear shares.

“In those first 10 or 12 minutes of the 42-minute episode, it has to feel like something’s going on. And to me, even though the first act is the setup, the first act is everything to me.

“I mean, seeing those guys banter, and then as you said, it’s that thing where it’s the people that you’re closest to who can get you to snap the fastest, and they can do it with shorthand, they can do it by just touching a nerve.

“Them kind of rocking out and having fun and laughing and scratching, and then Eddie just slowly getting more and more annoyed because of the traffic jam, and then they get lost, that to me is everything.

“And then sort of the other plot version of this is that Buck and Eddie needed to get into a squabble in public so that I could make the Eddie side of the story track with the sheriff saying, ‘People overheard you fighting.’ Everything is there for a reason, but I think it’s all very true to the characters.”

The heaviness of the 9-1-1 hour is balanced by the humorous beats, especially in the first and later acts.

In writing episodes like this, with sharp tonal shifts, Minear shared, “I just kind of feel my way through it, to be honest. And with a story like this, at some point pretty early on in the breaking of a story like this, it’ll just kind of drop into my head. I can see the whole shape of it.

“It’s almost more like painting than writing in a way, because you’re just feeling your way through the ebb and the flow and the tone and the emotion. I mean, that’s how I’ve always done it. It’s just instinct.”

Once Buck is taken by Bonnie and Earl, we see the biggest narrative change as the energy shifts to a much darker, more sinister atmosphere.

With Buck fighting for his life, in a moment of vulnerability and in an attempt to relate to his kidnapper, Buck delivers that haunting line that sometimes he doesn’t know who he is without Bobby.

Now that he’s said that out loud, Minear divulged that “yes,” Buck will have to unpack that now that it’s out there.

“There will be repercussions,” Minear assured. “There will be reverberations from this particular adventure.”

While both Buck and Eddie may deal with fallout from what happened to them, according to Minear, Buck will have more to deal with in the aftermath.

“Definitely more for Buck. I also think Buck was physically more injured than Eddie, and so that will also kind of feed into that a little bit. There’s that moment. I’m not saying his blood clot problem recurs.

“I’m not saying that, but there’s that moment where he’s saying to her, a fever after a car crash could mean a couple of things, one could be big blood clots. And for any of the fans who have been around and who know Buck’s story, you don’t need to say much more than that. That has deep meaning for that character, obviously.”

When Eddie arrives on the scene, things dovetail quickly, and with the stakes so heightened, Buck makes the decision to essentially sacrifice himself for Eddie’s safety.

It’s another poignant moment for the pair over the course of the series, which has seen several.

Was it ever really a question for Minear to have Buck sacrifice himself for Eddie in that moment?

“That was one of the last things that I kind of hit on as I was working out the last couple of acts of the story,” Minear shared.

“Essentially, the structure was all the same, right? Eddie is trying to get to Buck, and they are coming together right at that moment of climax.

“And I was just trying to figure out what would take this one step further. And we got to the notion of Buck agreeing to stay there and be Derek or do whatever he had to do to sacrifice himself so that Eddie would stay out of it.

“They’re both trying to save each other, which is what’s kind of beautiful. Buck’s doing what he can, Eddie’s doing what he can. Yeah, that moment where Buck decides that he will sacrifice his freedom or possibly his life so that he will be protecting Eddie and Chris, that is what made it more than just a bunch of action moves to me.”

It’s very possible that Eddie never gets to Buck in time without Athena, Maddie, and Chimney’s intervention.

Although they are physically back in Los Angeles, the story deftly weaves them into the New Mexico events, demonstrating how the scope broadens beyond a single location.

The story could have been self-contained to that location, but bringing in the others only enhanced it.

“Well, I’m a little superstitious about not having an episode that doesn’t have Angela Bassett in it, honestly,” Minear said when discussing the inclusion of the others in Buck and Eddie’s story.

“I don’t think we’ve even had one. There was one episode, probably in season seven or eight, where I just put her in one scene just to make sure the Queen was there. I definitely have a superstition about that.

“That being said, you want to try to service the other characters if you can. And if you’ll notice, everybody’s actually in the episode because you have Harry and Hen in the first part, and then you have everybody else in that birthday party at the end.

“But as for what you’re saying, Eddie needed someone to talk to and to kind of work the problem out with. So, it just made sense. And I don’t think you can tell a story where Buck disappears after a car crash without tracking his sister’s reaction.

“Of the characters that really needed to be tagged into the body of the narrative, I thought those three were essential.

“And once you separate them, particularly for Eddie, you need somebody that he could work the problem out with. Now, Buck, of course, has somebody to interact with, and that’s Batshit Bonnie.”

While the guys come out of the hour okay, we’ll see those reverberations from their experience in subsequent episodes, but what else is in store for the rest of this season?

Minear said, “You’re going to see some things that have been set up earlier in the season come together a little bit, and we’ve got some big surprises coming up, actually.”

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Episodes like this spark a lot of conversation among fans — and we’re always grateful to speak with the people behind them.

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You can watch 9-1-1 on Thursdays at 8/7c on ABC.