#Buddie Nation has waited years for Buck and Eddie to finally go house shopping together — but maybe we should have been more specific with our request.
9-1-1 ended its fall finale on Thursday by revealing that Eddie is moving to El Paso to be closer to Christopher. No one was more disappointed than Buck, who’s still baking his way through his breakup from Tommy, but he certainly couldn’t begrudge Eddie for missing his son. So Buck swallowed his sadness and offered to be Eddie’s real estate wingman.
Christopher’s absence has been weighing on Eddie all season, but it wasn’t until a heart-to-heart chat with Brad (of all people!) that he knew what had to be done. “Don’t let that gap between you grow another inch,” Brad urged him after explaining how he lost touch with his own son back in England. (Side note: We’d love to know which unaired CW pilot brought Brad to the States in the first place.)
Elsewhere in the fall finale, Athena solved a mystery surrounding the attack of a YouTube vigilante in a grocery store parking lot; Brad got a taste of what it means to be a hero, preventing a man from jumping to his death; and the 118 was bitten by the acting bug, with Buck & Co. getting to play doctors on Hotshots.
Below, showrunner Tim Minear answers TVLine’s burning questions about the fall finale, including Eddie’s (literal) next move and the meta reference he decided to cut from the Hotshots storyline:
Eddie’s FaceTime with Christopher was so sad. It’s almost like he’s not even “mad” at Eddie, he’s simply moved on. Is that sort of the vibe that we’re getting?
I think that’s definitely the vibe that we’re getting, which is what absolutely panics Eddie. Another reason that scene is so effective is because we haven’t seen a lot of Chris this season. So when you see him on that call, it’s like, “Holy cow, he’s grown up!” That’s the feeling Eddie’s having too. He’s slipping through his fingers and needs to do something. But also Christopher seems to be thriving, so does Eddie really want to yank him out of that environment? That’s what he’s wrestling with. How does he reconnect with his kid and do it in his kid’s best interest?
So he’s dead set on moving?
I think he’s dead serious about it, at least right now.
Buck was quick to volunteer to help him find a place, but he’s got to be devastated. Take us into his head.
Oh, I think there are fire alarms going off in his head right now. You can see it in Oliver’s performance, too. As soon as Eddie turns his back, Buck looks like he’s been hit in the head with a baseball bat, and that will figure in mightily when we come back.
Between Eddie leaving and the breakup with Tommy, Buck is lonelier than ever now. Was that on purpose, or did it just sort of pan out that way?
Well, if Eddie is thinking about relocating and upending Buck’s life, Buck already has abandonment issues stretching back ages, so this is going to have an effect on him. It’s just a question of how he’s going to deal with it.
Personally, I’d like to see him put himself back out there. Will we see that happen anytime soon?
I would think so. I’m working out the back 10 now, and we’re hitting the ground running. We’ve got two episodes shot already, which are just going to be bananas. The idea is always to move every character’s story down the field a little bit.
The last time I spoke with Oliver, he said he pitched a whole sex montage to you. I believe a certain hashtag was used.
[Laughs] #LetBuckF—k? Here’s the thing: Buck’s canon is that he was this kind of himbo, and I just don’t think you can go back to Buck 1.0. I’m not sure how the audience would react to Buck cadding around.
He also mentioned that there’s going to be some Buckley family drama on the horizon. Will that have anything to do with the abandonment issues we discussed earlier?
Let’s just say he’s going to feel even more abandoned by the time we get into Episode 10.
Uh-oh, I sense more baking coming.
He could open up a bakery at this point.
On a lighter note, the 118 got to make cameos in an episode of Hotshots. Any chance they’ll be bitten by the acting bug?
No, I think we’ve pretty much played out the meta firefighter show. I’m not saying it’s gone forever. It’s still in the universe of our show, so who’s to say? I really love Callum Blue.
Me too, so I love that Brad was the one who finally got through to him. You really concealed his depth from us.
Yeah, the whole idea was figuring out how to make the Hotshots thing amount to something? I think that moment with Eddie is how you make it amount to something. We also solved Brad’s problem in a way. He got to be a hero, and now he gets to say that maybe his life’s work isn’t so meaningless.
The meta storyline must have been fun for you, but also a little challenging. Did you ever have to pull back from having too much fun?
You know, I did. There was sort of a doppelgänger gag that we had in Episode 7 that just did not come off at all in the edit, so I took it out. But that might be something fun to revisit in the future if I ever go back into that world.
When Brad mentioned wanting a medical consultant, I was afraid Hen might be the next person sucked in.
I think Hen is way too smart to get into something like that.
Given that we have a three-month wait ahead of us, I’m just glad you didn’t end this on a cliffhanger.
Yeah, I wanted to do what I do in the season finales sometimes, which was to go out feeling pretty good. The world is stable, the ground hasn’t completely fallen out under our feet. That’s the feeling I was going for here. I wanted to feel like something got that we kind of put a period on something. I wanted to end this episode with most of our characters back in their resting positions, their factory settings… because when we come back, I’m gonna blow the factory the f—k up.
