Warning: This text incorporates spoilers fror 9-1-1 season 7, episode 1, “Abandon Ships.”
When 9-1-1 co-creator and showrunner Tim Minear promised some returning faces in season 7 of the first-responder drama, a deceased partner was in all probability not what followers had been considering.
However within the second half of Thursday’s premiere episode, Shannon Diaz (Devin Kelley) — Eddie’s (Ryan Guzman) estranged spouse, who died from accidents sustained in a automotive accident within the penultimate episode of season 2 — seems as her son, Christopher (Gavin McHugh), reads a letter she wrote him years earlier.
Minear tells Leisure Weekly that he relished the chance to convey visitor star Kelley again on the present (one thing that hadn’t occurred since an Eddie flashback episode in the midst of season 3), but additionally felt it was an opportunity to indicate Christopher’s improvement over the previous 4 seasons.
“As I used to be coming again into the season and seeing how a lot Christopher had grown, it occurred to me that within the early days of Christopher’s story, he was so little. At one level he is asking Santa Claus to convey his mother again,” Minear tells EW. “So he was simply very guileless and wasn’t blaming Shannon for something. He simply wished to see his mother once more. Now, I really feel like he is at an age the place not solely does he notice that she left due to her personal volition, but it surely’s now time for him to sort of wrestle with that query of why she left.”
Oliver Stark and Gavin McHugh on the ‘9-1-1’ season 7 premiere.
Disney/Chris Willard
“I am all the time on the aspect of my very own characters, so I wished to justify Shannon,” Kelley says of why she was excited to return once more. “To present the viewers this little nugget that perhaps folks hadn’t seen earlier than simply made me really feel a bit vindicated.
“The final I noticed Gavin was proper earlier than the pandemic, and he is grown up a lot,” she provides of reuniting together with her onscreen son. “On the threat of sounding like a really stereotypical mother, he has simply come into his personal. It was so cool to dip again in, and simply be like, ‘Wow, time has handed.’ He is so hilarious and candy. We simply reconnected instantly. Ryan was on set that day too, and so we had a really candy household reunion. I used to be taking footage, and it was nice to reconnect with Gavin’s actual mother as a result of I hadn’t talked to her shortly.”
Shannon’s return additionally allowed Minear to discover Christopher’s grief: “Generally we really feel deserted when those that we love die. So I feel he feels doubly deserted, and I feel he is conflating these two issues. He is nonetheless coping with his mom’s loss of life, however now he is attending to an age the place he is understanding the losses that he has suffered.”
Minear felt this was notably necessary to discover because the action-adventure sequence moved from Fox to ABC for the brand new season.
“It is a query of coming onto a brand new community, beginning a brand new season after we have been off the air for thus lengthy: ‘What are the necessary issues that sort of outline these characters?’ And for me, that not solely defines the place Christopher is, but it surely allowed me to come back in a cheeky manner the place it felt like, ‘Oh, that is going to be a enjoyable little story about Christopher being a participant and having lots of ladies on the road, when actually what it is about is he going to take his trauma that he suffered as a child, and is that going to be one thing that manifests itself as he will get older, and what’s his relationship to ladies?’”
The co-creator says he selected to spotlight this story within the premiere as a result of it additionally offered perception to Eddie and his greatest pal Buck (Oliver Stark).
“This additionally defines Eddie, as a result of Christopher defines Eddie, and defending his son and elevating his son and ensuring his son is okay and secure and wholesome and joyful is admittedly what defines Eddie,” he says. “And, after all, Buck feels a familial responsibility to each these guys. He feels virtually like an uncle or a second dad to Christopher. I believed [it was] a good way to disclose corners of the dynamics of that triad.”
However don’t fear, as indicated by Eddie’s smile seeing Christopher turning the photograph of Shannon again upright on his desk, we aren’t in for a dour Eddie season.
“I imagine that we’ll see Eddie smiling much more,” Guzman has instructed EW of his character in season 7. “We will see much less crying and loopy Eddie and the drama and trauma that Eddie’s gone by way of. We will see just a little bit extra of him rounding the nook and exhibiting his humorous aspect.”
However will we see Shannon pop up extra because the sequence continues?
“Possibly Shannon can actually go off to relaxation in peace, or perhaps she’ll come again in another iteration,” says Kelley. “We do not know, however I am recreation for all of it.”
9-1-1 airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.
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