‘9-1-1’: Oliver Stark on Filming That Shocking Lightning Strike, Plus Why Fans Should Be Worried

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for 9-1-1 Season 6 Episode 10, “In a Flash.”]

9-1-1 returned on March 6 with perhaps the most intense ending of an episode yet for the first responder drama.

After dealing with calls involving lightning strikes all episode, the 118 had to try to save one of their own in the final moments. Buck (Oliver Stark), after taking Chimney’s (Kenneth Choi) place, was up on the ladder when he was struck by lightning. His friends and fellow firefighters could only stare in shock before racing to help him as he dangled lifeless. When they loaded him into the ambulance and sped off — his helmet left on the ground in a powerful lasting image — he had no pulse and was in full cardiac arrest.

“When I’m dangling off the very top of the ladder, that is not me. That’s a double, as is the nature of filming these things. But there were some rough nights. We were there filming in downtown LA ‘til the very, very early hours of the morning strung up there, once it gets about the midway under this freezing cold fake rain,” Stark shares with TV Insider.

“I think more than anything that the difficulties came when I’m put on the gurney and Chimney climbs on top and they’re ripping over my shirt and this water is barreling down onto my face, but I am dead at that point. So being able to not move at all as Chimney tries to give me compressions onto my chest, it was fun, but it was really challenging just, as I say, because of all of those elements together,” he continues.

Jack Zeman/ FOX

And the cast was aware of the importance of that scene. “We knew that we were filming something that was going to have real impact and was really going to draw out a lot of emotion from fans of the show because I think the emergencies in which we find a member of the 118 or Athena or Maddie in peril are the emergencies that really hit hardest,” Stark says.

He was also proud to be the one at the center of the emergency and cliffhanger. According to the star, “I took it as something as an honor and a real testament to the journey that Buck has been on that he got to be put in this position because I think we are aware that that would elicit quite an emotional reaction from the characters in the show and I hope from the audience when they watch it.”

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And while he’s not one to check Twitter all the time to see what fans are saying (“I try not to look, but every now and then, I find myself having a little browse”), he does hope to see fans worried after the episode. “They should be. This is the world of 9-1-1 and anything can happen, so they should be a little bit worried,” he points out.

A little bit? More like very!

9-1-1, Mondays, 8/7c, Fox