When it was announced that the fifth season of 9-1-1: Lone Star would also be its last, rumors started flying that not every character would survive. Castmember Sierra McClain exited the series before Season 5 even started, but surely on a show with such life-and-death stakes, there would be at least one dramatic death in the finale, right? Well, the series finale aired this week on FOX, and the entire 126 Firehouse made it to the end unscathed. However, I’m not so sure that’s a good thing.
The ‘9-1-1: Lone Star’ Finale Endangered Everyone
In the last episode of the series, an asteroid hurtles towards Austin. After impact, the 126 discover that they’ve survived the catastrophe all in one piece. It’s surprising enough that this emergency occurred without any of the crew suffering from injuries. But to add one more wrinkle to everyone’s safety, the team is then tasked with heading to a nuclear reactor site. They must turn off the reactor before it explodes and basically kills everyone in a huge radius. Once inside the building, Marjan (Natacha Karam), Judd (Jim Parrack), Paul (Brian Michael Smith), and Mateo (Julian Works) are all maimed by flying debris, so it falls upon Owen (Rob Lowe), who is also injured, to drag himself to the button before the countdown ends. Of course, in true television drama fashion, he hits the button a second before the countdown reaches zero. But by the time another rescue worker can attend to Owen, he’s lying there motionless. There’s a time jump of several months, and the show plays out with everyone acting like Owen is gone. I immediately assumed that Owen didn’t really die (there’s no funeral or anything to honor him), and that he had just headed to New York City to take on the fire captain job he was offered. The last scene confirms my suspicions. The series ends with Owen being alive and well, just no longer with the 126 in Texas.
Owen Surviving Feels Unrealistic in ‘9-1-1: Lone Star’
There are several reasons why I think that the series finale missed the mark. First, it’s incredibly surprising that no main characters are killed during an asteroid strike and impending nuclear reactor disaster. Not one member of the team bites the dust — not even Tommy (Gina Torres), who was battling terminal cancer in the prior episode. In fact, it’s revealed that Tommy’s cancer is actually in remission, and she’s going to be just fine. By also having Owen survive the episode, it makes it seem like the circumstances that were supposed to be so inherently dangerous to the crew weren’t all that life-threatening after all. It actually makes the entire disaster storyline feel less significant (and much less worthy of a final emergency call for the crew to end on).
Because Owen survives, it also seems like the writers decided to go with a more cheesy, melodramatic tone versus an authentic one. The finale would have been much more moving if there had actually been some honest form of heartbreak, instead of everything being tied up in a neat, happy bow. This is also a criticism that’s been circling the Judd/Grace storyline as well; serious topics such as addiction and depression have been glossed over in order to rush through to the end. Also, Owen has made it through countless calamities (including 9/11, cancer, and multiple injuries) without any long-lasting consequences. As sad as it would have been to have Owen kick the bucket, it would have been more realistic that his dangerous lifestyle actually resulted in his death. It also would have been more compelling to have the characters have to deal with the true loss of their leader, rather than him just being a FaceTime call away.
It’s disappointing to me that the series couldn’t highlight the truly intense stakes that first responders deal with. Instead, every character is safe, no matter how improbable that may be. Showrunner Rashad Raisani has mentioned that the writers didn’t want to kill off any major characters in case they could pop up in the future on any other shows in the franchise (such as the flagship 9-1-1 or the spin-off that’s currently in development). That just means that they’ve saved Owen’s life at the expense of giving 9-1-1: Lone Star the ending it deserved. It’s nearly impossible for series finales to please everyone, but this misstep is not one I’m going to be able to get over for a while.
