Even in the worst moments of their lives, the first-responders of 9-1-1 will always show up to save the residents of Los Angeles.
In the Season 8 finale of the ABC procedural drama, fittingly titled "Seismic Shifts," Sgt. Athena Grant-Nash (Angela Bassett) and the firefighters and paramedics of the 118 are dispatched to a mass casualty event after a 19-story apartment building collapses and leaves potentially hundreds of inhabitants trapped under the rubble. Given the scale of the emergency, the first responders will get paired up — Buck (Oliver Stark) and Ravi (Anirudh Pisharody) will save victims living on higher floors, and, as indicated in the synopsis of the episode, Athena and Chimney (Kenneth Choi) will team up to save a familiar face who finds themselves stuck on the ground floor. (That won't be awkward at all.)
In TV Guide's exclusive sneak peek of the finale, Athena, who narrowly missed being trapped under the debris herself, tells the 9-1-1 dispatchers (including Jennifer Love Hewitt's Maddie Han) to "send everybody" to the scene:
Tonight's episode marks the conclusion of the most heart-wrenching season of 9-1-1 to date — and this is a show that has put every first-responder at death's door and pulled them back from the brink time and time again. Last month, for the first time in the show's eight-year history, co-creator and showrunner Tim Minear decided to kill off a main character: Robert "Bobby" Nash (Peter Krause), the fire captain who had helped build the 118 from the ground up after suffering unimaginable personal loss, getting sober, and finding love again with Athena.
The final three episodes of Season 8 have found newly widowed Athena and the remaining members of the 118 — including former member Eddie Diaz (Ryan Guzman), who recently moved back to El Paso to reconnect with his teenage son and only returned to Los Angeles for Bobby's funeral — grieving and reeling from losing the center of their personal and professional lives. This finale will represent a reset of sorts for all of the main characters.
While continuing to respond to outlandish calls from residents, each character has been attempting to process this loss in their own way, leading to some expected tension and friction between the once-tight-knit group. Athena has been holding an understandable grudge against Chimney — who Bobby sacrificed himself to save in the aftermath of a lab explosion — and the thought of the two working together under duress may not bode well for either of them.
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The fractured nature of the 118 will also come into focus in this action-packed finale, with multiple members considering leaving the fire station for good. Viewers learned in the penultimate episode that Eddie had received a job offer from the fire department in El Paso, which he had been planning to accept and would presumably need to begin soon. But, as shown in the stills for the finale, Eddie has somehow gotten his hands on some of his firefighter gear from the 118. Will he be sticking around for good, or will he jump into action with his beloved team one last time before saying goodbye again? Will we have to bid farewell to anyone else? And with Bobby now gone, who will be the next captain of the fire station?
