{"id":781774,"date":"2026-05-08T10:49:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T10:49:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/781774\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T10:49:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T10:49:22","slug":"911-finale-buck-theo-decision-athenas-detective-fate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/781774\/","title":{"rendered":"911 Finale: Buck-Theo Decision, Athena’s Detective Fate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSPOILER ALERT:\u00a0<\/strong>This story contains spoilers for the Season 9 finale of ABC\u2019s \u201c9-1-1<\/a>,\u201d titled \u201cHearts and Flowers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c9-1-1\u201d ended its ninth season Thursday with two big changes heading into Season 10: Athena (Angela Bassett) is finally becoming a detective \u2014 and Buck (Oliver Stark<\/a>) might become a father.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the final moments of the \u201c9-1-1\u201d Season 9 finale, it was revealed that Buck has taken in preschooler Theo and will be fostering him after the unexpected car-crash death of Theo\u2019s parents (who were Buck\u2019s good friends). Theo is technically Buck\u2019s biological son \u2014 but Buck previously wanted as little to do with the child as possible, given that he was the sperm donor for his friends and didn\u2019t intend to be part of Theo\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo, is he stepping in now because there\u2019s no one else \u2014 or because he\u2019s potentially interested in actually becoming the adoptive father to his biological son?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cLike most decisions, it\u2019s a little bit of both, right? Everything all at the same time,\u201d Stark told Variety. \u201cI think he probably feels some kind of duty and obligation, not necessarily because of the sperm donor aspect, but because it was his friends. And maybe even an element of not being able to save them \u2014 not that it was ever his fault. But, I could imagine him to be a character that would shoulder some kind of blame like that, regardless.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFor the upcoming Season 10 of \u201c9-1-1,\u201d Stark said the show now has \u201cthe opportunity to delve into why he maybe did have to step in here\u2026 Who else is in Theo\u2019s life, and why hasn\u2019t he been helped out further by the foster system?\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c9-1-1\u201d co-creator and showrunner Tim Minear<\/a> confirmed that Buck fostering Theo is \u201cgoing to be a gold mine for story\u201d next season on the Ryan Murphy-produced first-responder drama.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think it\u2019s completely within Buck\u2019s character to make a decision like that without thinking it through entirely,\u201d he said. \u201cBut he absolutely wants this right now. It\u2019s funny, because I talked to Oliver, and he kind of felt like, \u2018Maybe I played the ending wrong, because I seem so happy that Theo is there, and am I thinking about the tragedy that he has to be there because his parents died?\u2019 I don\u2019t think he played it wrong at all. I thought he played it perfectly, but that\u2019s really the exploration for Season 10.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs for Athena, she survived after her fatal injury due to the police corruption case she\u2019s been working on \u2014 and the follow-up assassination attempt that happened as she was in the hospital for the first attack. Now, the field sergeant is a field sergeant no more. Athena will be taking on the role she\u2019s been actively doing for a few seasons now, just without the title: detective.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo get to this career choice, Athena had a heart-to-heart with her deceased former partner, Officer Brogan McCluskey (Karl Makinen), in a dream sequence. Minear said that although Athena has been grieving the death of her husband Bobby (Peter Krause) all season, \u201c9-1-1\u201d did not approach Krause to return for this part of the episode and be the one that helps Athena through her brush with death.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cObviously, if I could have done something like that, that would have been great,\u201d Minear said. \u201cBut Peter had moved on to his pilot at that point, and so McCluskey made sense to me. I didn\u2019t just pull him out of the distant past. She had those flashback scenes in Episode 4 with McCluskey and Young Athena. And so it really was Athena\u2019s track in this episode. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYes, I spent most of the season making sure that everybody got to grieve properly,\u201d he continued. \u201cSo it was a season of dealing with Bobby\u2019s death. But I wanted to move past that, after the Buck episode with the opioids. And so Athena\u2019s track here is really a career track. It\u2019s about her being a cop. It\u2019s about the danger that she\u2019s in, and also, is she ready to make a change? So, McCluskey made the most sense to kind of jump the hurdle into her becoming a detective.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Athena\u2019s emergency is the main issue for the 118 in the \u201c9-1-1\u201d Season 9 finale, Eddie (Ryan Guzman) is simultaneously bleeding out in an elevator after being stabbed by the assassin coming to finish the job with Athena. Eddie, of course, is saved when he\u2019s found after the Athena issue is resolved. <\/p>\n

\n\tMinear explained why he added this plot for Eddie \u2014 and it wasn\u2019t just because he didn\u2019t have much else for Guzman\u2019s character to do as the season came to a close.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI wanted to at least mention the things that I was doing with the characters throughout the season, and Eddie\u2019s was in trying to reconcile himself safe,\u201d Minear said. \u201cThat was an important moment for me, just for Eddie\u2019s character. But it also really landed the villain in the story. We just met this kid; we saw him in the previous episode, and then we met him a little bit in that flashback. And I really wanted to just land for the audience what the threat was. So that scene served purposes \u2014 and once Eddie gets stuck in an elevator and he\u2019s bleeding out, it just adds another element to the story that I think makes it more suspenseful going to Athena.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHeading into \u201c9-1-1\u201d Season 10, Minear is also focused on May Grant (Corinne Massiah) and her journey into nursing school. It \u201cwasn\u2019t such a surprise\u201d to see in the Season 9 finale, he said, \u201cbecause she\u2019d been talking about that for episodes.\u201d But it still marks a significant move for Athena\u2019s daughter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SPOILER ALERT:\u00a0This story contains spoilers for the Season 9 finale of ABC\u2019s \u201c9-1-1,\u201d titled \u201cHearts and Flowers.\u201d \u201c9-1-1\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":781775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[31513,171,147212,319889,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-781774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-9-1-1","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-oliver-stark","11":"tag-tim-minear","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116538570977684522","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=781774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/781775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=781774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=781774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=781774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}