‘9-1-1: Lone Star’ Boss Details What Would’ve Happened in a Season 6 and Alternate Endings

Never Miss An Alert from The 126

For exclusive news and updates, subscribe to our 9-1-1: Lone Star Newsletter:

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the 9-1-1: Lone Star series finale “Homecoming.”]

The good news: No one dies in the 9-1-1: Lone Star finale, though it briefly looks like Owen (Rob Lowe) will. The bad news: The show is now over.

The series wraps with the 126 shutting down a nuclear reactor before a five-month time jump reveals: Owen moves to New York; Tommy’s (Gina Torres) in remission; Judd (Jim Parrack) is now captain; T.K. (Ronen Rubinstein) is a stay-at-home dad after he and Carlos (Rafael Silva) adopt Jonah; Marjan’s (Natacha Karam) pregnant; and Mateo’s (Julian Works) citizenship is fast-tracked due to his service as a firefighter.

Below, co-showrunner Rashad Raisani breaks down the series finale, teases what would’ve happened if the show had continued, and more. (Plus, read what Lowe had to say about Owen’s ending and more here, and check out our First Response aftershow for the finale here.)

Talk about bringing Owen full circle back to New York and the fake-out death. Had you ever considered another ending for him?

Rashad Raisani: As we were approaching this finale — I didn’t want it to be the end, but it was, and it had to be — I started going back to the pilot of the show and thinking about the themes that we had set up and seeing if that could help guide how to end the thing. One of the things that emerged to me was at the beginning of the show, Owen has cancer. T.K. has just had an OD where his heart stopped. They’re both sick in their own ways. And the 126 has just undergone this terrible tragedy and it’s a shell of itself. This series has been about the healing process that’s happened for the 126, for Owen [who’s] now cancer free, T.K. has found a way to beat his addiction and also just to become a much bigger person. Then it was, how do we tell that, that this has been about healing? I think that the best way is once everything has been healed — Owen and T.K. have both healed themselves and healed the situation they came into, and so for them, then it’s both about, what’s next? Where’s the next journey going to take them in life? I wanted that feeling.

Kevin Estrada/FOX

Also the ending of the show was such a kick in the stomach anyway, that we were ending, in my opinion, too early and it was really hard for everybody. So the idea to pile on top of that, to leave you as you walk out the door with a terrible death to ponder, I just didn’t really want to do that. It was, well, if we’re not going to do that, let’s have the audience have to suffer as much as possible until we give them that happy ending.

What made the adoption storyline the right last one for T.K. and Carlos as a couple?

There’s a couple of factors that went into it. One was that both have had to suffer so much, particularly in the last two years and basically since right before they got married. So what I wanted to do in the last time you see them as a family before the final scene is just to give them joy, unbridled joy, that they have so earned and to see this picture of what their family is going to look like.

Secondly, to me, there is no real meaning in life without some version of sacrifice. And so I felt like to earn this joy, T.K. had to give up something, and he was always willing — he said in Episode 9, if it’s between my little brother and my husband, I have to pick my little brother. We’d already made the promise that T.K. was willing and would have to make some kind of sacrifice to be able to take care of Jonah and to earn that joy, so to speak. That’s not to say that in a couple of years, T.K. won’t be able to go back to work, but right now, it was about T.K. showing the love that he had for this little boy and for his family with Carlos that he was willing to give that up so they could all be a family.

Marjan’s pregnant. Was there any debate about whether to just have her and Joe talking about kids? It feels like their major steps were a bit rushed — engagement and wedding in one episode!

Yeah. We had two episodes to get her to a place… I always wanted to end Marjan pregnant because to me, it was the antithesis of — it was the full maturation of her strength to show some vulnerability because when she came in that first season, she was very guarded. She was always strong, always an adrenaline junkie, but wasn’t willing to let people in and to have the courage to sometimes be a little softer, to show that there’s no less strength in being vulnerable. In fact, it takes more. We always knew we wanted to have her end there, but then when our order went from 18 to 12 [episodes], we sometimes had to make hard calls about, how do we give her the joy of some of these big moments? You can’t go everywhere we would’ve in a 20-episode season. And so unfortunately, I wish we could have had more time to play some of those things, but we just didn’t.

Are there any alternate endings you considered for anyone?

One alternate ending was I definitely considered killing Owen and letting his death just be the death. But as I said, it just felt like it was too sad on top of the fact that it was sad already. I’d say that was the biggest. We also had talked about T.K. and Carlos maybe moving to a new city and starting a new life together somewhere else in Texas to set up a possible spinoff. To be honest, I’d say those are the two biggest. Everything else I think was we ended where we wanted to. We just ended two years too soon.

How would the season and finale have been different if you’d known when you were making it, you were going to get a Season 6?

We would’ve probably not advanced — I would’ve told more stories and I probably would’ve ended the season on this disaster coming as opposed to going through to the end of it because I would’ve loved to have spent more time doing some of the things that you were asking about in your questions. I would’ve loved to have shown Carlos have another Texas Ranger case after finding out his boss was his dad’s killer and with his partner Ranger Campbell [Parker Young]. I would’ve loved to have a T.K. and Carlos episode you had alluded to in one of our previous interviews about seeing what it was like for them before they decide to pull the trigger on adopting, see them go through that transition period, just play that for an episode. Play an episode where Judd and Tommy get to [interact more]. Just let people breathe a little bit more and then end, I think, the season probably with people deciding if they wanted to make these choices and then using next year to see them go through them as opposed to cutting to the end as we do.

Kevin Estrada/FOX

So anyway, a long-winded way of saying I think we would’ve ended the things in the same area in Season 6, but just taken longer to get there and not jumped over five months of stuff. We would’ve seen a lot more of those five months.

So then what would Season 6 have looked like?

I would’ve loved, I think, to have started to see Judd as a captain. I would’ve loved to have seen Carlos continue to be a Texas Ranger in a more leadership position. I would’ve loved to have played T.K. struggling with being a stay-at-home dad, but finding the love in it and maybe finding a way to continue to help people in some capacity. I would’ve loved to have seen Tommy maybe rise into being an even higher position in the Austin Fire Department as a chief medical officer and allow Nancy [Brianna Baker] to take the role that she had. I would’ve loved to have seen Marjan be a pregnant firefighter and see where that would go and what those challenges would look like.

If Judd were captain, what would that have meant for Owen? Would we have seen Rob for a full season or not?

I think we would’ve seen Owen come in and — this is all theoretical. I would’ve liked to see him in New York and see some of what his life looked like and what his job looked like. We never got to send Carlos to New York City. We never got to play a lot of that kind of stuff that we had hinted at throughout the years. So I think we would’ve had to really go there and just see what life looks like if Owen does decide to step out. Now, we may have made him step out of Austin later than he did, so we would still have had Owen as our captain for a big chunk of Season 6 before we sent him to New York. But that would’ve been fun to do.

Are there any other storylines you weren’t able to do this season or a previous one that you can talk about?

The one that comes to mind the most is Grace Ryder. She was kind of the heartbeat of the show. I had talked a lot to Sierra [McClain] about where we were going to take her character. A lot of Judd’s arc this season was inspired by what Grace’s arc was going to be, which was to see someone whose faith, like Job in the Bible, gets really tested and something that they thought was essential part of themselves, have it start to come into check and have the center no longer hold and see what that meant for her and how she came back from that.

Paul (Brian Michael Smith) really steps into a leadership role this season, and we see that with bringing Jax into the firehouse. Is that what you’re setting up Paul’s future to be, reaching out to the community and bringing people more into their world?

Yes. You just reminded me of one of the other storylines we were going to do in Season 6 actually, which was Jax was going to become the new probie of the firehouse and we were going to continue that mentorship from Paul.

When did you know that you wanted to get Mateo to that point with his citizenship?

We always knew we wanted him to get to that. That was going to be his existential crisis. Because for me, the thing to show that Mateo had fully grown was that he was done, as he says in his little speech, hiding. His character was always hiding something in every season, whether it be his dyslexia, his DACA status, and then his cousin took the fall for [the fire] and ended up dying. He carries all this guilt and shame. And so we wanted to do a story that would force him to make a decision about, “You know what, I’m done hiding from things. Because even when I try and do the right thing, bad things happen to me. So I might as well be the man that I am and that I want to be.” That’s what he does in that last scene. He finally says, “I’m done running away from things in my life and here’s all the bad things I’ve done, but here’s all the good things I’m done and here’s who I am. And you know what, world, you can take it or leave it.” I wish we could have done another storyline with Mateo that didn’t have him already at this point, just to have a more fun story with him because he’s so funny. But we had to get serious with him pretty quick just because we only had the 12 episodes.

Related

Would Rob Lowe Play Owen Again After '9-1-1: Lone Star' Series Finale?

What do you think the chances are for some sort of Lone Star revival?

Oh, my heart says, “Please, God, yes, please, please, please.” And my brain says, “Probably not.” I would love it, but when a show is still doing well and is regularly number one on Hulu after it airs and it doesn’t seem to matter, whatever these hard prices are and whatever these corporate decisions are, it just seems difficult. That’s my impression. I hope I’m wrong.

So you brought back Derek Webster as Charles, which was great. But is there anyone else you wish you would’ve been able to bring back for the final season in any capacity but couldn’t?

Lisa Edelstein, who played Gwyn, is probably the first one. I always thought she was just fantastic.

And what about introducing onscreen Owen’s other ex-wife?

Oh, we talked about it all the time. I’m glad you brought that up. That was another thing. She was almost like Niles Crane’s wife on Frasier, where he’d always refer to her and she was always offscreen. So I always had fun putting in this other wife was just such a character. I would’ve loved to. We had moments where we were about to, and then the story kind of took a different pitch. But yeah, that would’ve been great.

If you had gone more seasons, would you have considered killing anyone off?

Yes, we would’ve. I think we would’ve because we would’ve had time to show the healing process from it and have it be beautiful. But I didn’t want to kill somebody and have it be over. I just thought that was too rough.

9-1-1: Lone Star, Streaming now, Hulu