🚨🚨🚨Warning: Spoilers ahead for Season Eight, Episode 12, of “9-1-1.”
After 11 episodes apart, Eddie Diaz has finally reunited with his son, Christopher, on “9-1-1.”
Season Eight, Episode 12, of the ABC drama picked up three weeks after Episode 10, when Eddie (Ryan Guzman) moved back home to El Paso, Texas, to reunite with Chris (Gavin McHugh), who left Los Angeles at the end of Season Seven.
The episode, titled “Disconnected,” also saw dispatcher Maddie Han (Jennifer Love Hewitt) deal with the aftermath of her kidnapping.
At the end of the midseason premiere, Maddie was taken from her home by police detective Amber Braeburn (Abigail Spencer), who turned out to be the serial killer Maddie and Sgt. Athena Grant (Angela Bassett) had been looking for all along.
Once firefighter husband Howie “Chimney” Han (Kenneth Choi) set out to try and rescue Maddie, and put himself in harm’s way, she gave up trying to talk down Amber and fought back, starting a clash that resulted with her throat being slashed.
“I’ve got to put my characters through hell,” showrunner Tim Minear tells TODAY.com. “It was her turn. You know what? I spun that wheel. Her number came up.”
In Episode 12, Maddie tries to go back to work but on her first call, loses her voice, which turns out to be a psychological response to the trauma she faced.
As she reels from being separated from her job, Eddie similarly struggles to find his footing in Texas. His house is proving to be a major fixer-upper, and he isn’t able to join a local fire station in El Paso amid a hiring freeze. So, he trades in his tricked-out truck for a sedan with better gas mileage to become an Uber driver — a development he keeps from his parents and Chris.
That is, until his son is the one hopping in the back of his car for a ride.
After the awkward moment of truth, Eddie recaps the encounter over FaceTime to his best friend and former co-worker, Evan “Buck” Buckley (Oliver Stark), who encourages him to talk to Chris directly.
While Eddie’s texts to his son go unanswered, Chris surprises his dad by showing up at his house unannounced. The 14-year-old says he wants Eddie to stay in El Paso. Eddie then apologizes for lying about his current profession, telling Chris, “I just wanted you to be proud of me.”
“I am proud of you,” Chris responds, and the father and son share a long-awaited hug.
Maddie also ends the episode reconnecting with her daughter — verbally that is. After briefly losing track of Jee-Yun at a playground, Maddie struggles to shout her child’s name, until her voice comes roaring back.
Below, Minear breaks down Maddie’s and Eddie’s big breakthroughs in Episode 12 and previews what’s ahead.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
From the Season Two premiere, being a dispatcher has given Maddie so much purpose. She says after the kidnapping, “This is where I want to be.” What were you hoping to show by temporarily stripping her of her ability to do that?
To remind her where her power is, really.
I just thought it was interesting. By being attacked the way she was, having her throat cut, that does sort of temporarily take away her voice, but then it becomes, like a psychological version of that. I sort of like the metaphor that Maddie’s voice — I mean, it’s the thing that people hear over that phone, and it’s a tether to hope or death. So that voice is really her superpower.
And then at the end, how she gets it back, the first word she says is, “Jee” (her daughter’s name). Could you walk me through that choice?
So we had several different versions of how her voice came back, and pretty much all of them were predicated on her child. But we did have what I felt were, like, sort of convoluted ways that it happened.
And then I think it may have been (writer) Molly Green’s idea to have her just be out in a public place. And a thing that any parent can actually really relate to is you turn around for a split second and you look back and you have that moment of panic, because it’s like, “Wait, where’d my kid go?”
So, when she really needed her voice, it came back. And it’s really because of the things that Athena was saying to her in a previous scene. That she has to wrestle with her own fear on her job, but then she thinks about the people that need her, and she muscles through. And that’s exactly what happens to Maddie in that moment.
Going to El Paso — Chris and Eddie reunite after 11 episodes, but their reunion wasn’t shown on screen. Could you tell me what that might have looked like?
I think Eddie feels like a bit of an outsider in his life. So I think what it would have looked like is kind of what you’re seeing, where Eddie is going over to his parents’ house for family dinners. His mother in particular is sort of taking on the role of parent, and so she’s almost treating Eddie and Christopher like they were both her sons — almost treating Eddie like he’s Christopher’s brother, as opposed to his father.
But the first thing Eddie needs to do is kind of like lay down some roots and get his house ready so that Christopher can move in.
But his whole story so far has been that he doesn’t want to spook his kid. He’s approaching this in — I’m not even advocating that he’s made the right choice here — but he’s approaching this in a very circumspect way. And he just, he wants to make sure that it’s Chris’ choice to come back. I think his mother in particular is kind of leveraging that against him a little bit.
“Confessions” (Season Eight, Episode Six) touched on Eddie having a disguise, him hiding. And the lesson being he needs to find joy and take care of himself before taking care of others. This episode, we see him hiding his current occupation. Has he learned Father Brian’s lesson?
I think he is learning Father Brian’s lesson.
But I think this instance is very different than what happened with him in LA. He was lying to everybody by omission. He’s kind of doing that again.
Eddie seems to have some patterns here. I think Eddie needs to work on that. Now that I think about it, he sort of lets people believe what they believe.
It’s a little bit different here because he was withholding something intentionally in the Kim storyline. Here, it’s more that he didn’t mean to give the wrong impression, but he’s too afraid to correct that mistake.
In the end, after the Uber situation, Chris tells Eddie he is proud of him and wants him there. What does that mean for Eddie to hear right now?
It means everything. The door is now open for Eddie. Now he just needs to walk through it.
Can you say more about that?
Well it’s the very next episode, so I don’t necessarily want to spoil it, but Eddie needs to dad up, and that is the story that we tell in the next episode.
Eddie’s goal is for Chris to live with him permanently, but his parents, back to Season Three, have also said that they want Chris to live with them permanently. What can you say about Eddie and his mother’s dynamic ahead?
Eddie and his relationship with his parents vis-à-vis Christopher is very much the focus of Eddie’s story in the next episode.
In ‘Invisible’ (Episode 13), I’ve heard there’s a great Hen (Aisha Hinds) storyline … What can you say about what’s in store for Hen?
The episode is called “Invisible.” And the characters feel invisible, and even Hen feels invisible, which is unusual for Hen. But there’s just a really nice story of Hen doing what she does best, which is bonding on a human level with a patient, with a character who’s feeling unseen, and she helps him to feel more seen, and it doesn’t quite go as she expects.
After Season Eight, Episode 11 — a huge moment for Buck and “Buddie” fans — this episode over FaceTime, things seem back to normal with Buck and Eddie. Their friendship seems back on good ground, even though they parted after fighting. Then Buck was questioned if he has more than platonic feelings. What’s the current status of their friendship? … How’s their dynamic going to be going forward?
I don’t think their dynamic really has changed. As I’ve said repeatedly, I’ve been writing these characters the same since Eddie’s introduction, since the beginning of Season Two. And I think they were on good, solid ground when they parted at the end of Episode 10.
What I would say is, there’s a thing that happens in tonight’s episode, where Buck has the opportunity to encourage Eddie to come back to LA. Eddie, in a weak moment, or in a vulnerable moment, I should say, when his job situation is not panning out the way he had hoped, suggests that maybe he should just come back and do his old job, because he’s not living with his kid anyway, and he needs to provide for him. And it’s Buck who says, “You can’t come back.”
So I think what you see, and it’s subtle, is a little growth for Buck. Like this time, he didn’t have to hem and haw, he didn’t have to go adopt an animal. He just said the thing that Eddie needed to hear. And it was at a, you know, not a huge price for Buck, but he really was just thinking about the other person in this instance, and I think that’s growth.
Going ahead to Episodes 14 and 15, another big two-part emergency. The throat slash … that was a very intense scene. Where are we going, in terms of stakes, from here? How did that set the tone of the back half of the season?
It’s always a trick, when you’re in Season Eight of something, and you’re continuously putting your characters in peril, that you do want to feel like there’s fallout, that there are stakes, that the things that happen to them matter.
The stakes are very high going forward for the rest of the season. And not just for one character.
I know you said the next episode will be a story about Eddie and his parents. Fans wonder, part of that complicated relationship was the Season Four finale and the reveal that Eddie’s parents aren’t even (Christopher’s legal guardians in Eddie’s will), per Eddie’s choice. Do Eddie’s parents know that? Will that ever be revisited?
I mean I think it would be revisited should the need for the reading of a will arrive.
But you know I’m quite sure Eddie doesn’t share every move he makes with his parents. And so I would not assume that they know that at all.
If you had three words for the rest of the season— three for Eddie, three for Maddie — what would it be?
Family, faith and loyalty, I think for both of them.
