ABC’s 9-1-1 returned last night for its Season 10 premiere, and it was explosive! The series, which showcases an opening disaster for every season, has previously done earthquakes, tsunamis, a bee tornado (and even last season, space).
Editor’s note: Spoilers below!
This season, however, kicked off with a massive sinkhole that by the end, started spewing lava. Going into the season, we knew that a volcano would take over Los Angeles, and viewers have been eagerly awaiting the premiere to see just how they’d do it.
The episode starts immediately, kicking into high gear, introducing characters that you know are just not going to be having their best day. Between a double-decker tour bus, an older man as a student driver, and an actor who was practicing lines while driving (practice safe driving, everyone!), it all comes to a head when the student driver barely hits the tour bus, and we see a massive sinkhole opening up underneath them.
Immediately, our favorites from the 118 return, kicking into action. The show shows the high stakes early, as the sinkhole continues to open. As Chimney tells everyone to get back, the piece of asphalt he’s standing on gives out, and he’s left clinging to the edge of the road while Ravi runs to him and pulls him up. We see the rest of our team – Eddie, Buck, Hen, Harry – start rescuing people, including the older gentleman who was the student driver whose pacemaker keeps going off (and it creates a moment where he tells Hen to tell his daughter and granddaughter he loves them if he doesn’t make it – cue tears already).
This is only the first ten minutes of the episode. The team continues to do some high-risk rescues, including Harry falling into the water and Eddie jumping in to rescue a woman stuck underwater in a car.
Things all around the city are getting weird. Maddie is brought into meetings about the sinkhole, and she’s asked to review all 911 calls in that area for the last eight weeks. As she’s doing this, she notices an uptick in these calls and alerts officials that something has been happening. I love seeing Maddie in this role; she’s confident and really showcases how brilliant she is here.
The 118 also responds to a call at an aquarium where there was a diver in the tank who started noticing something was wrong and said he was burning, and people outside of the tank called 911. The team found out that there were sulfur fumes, and another worker had chemical burns on his hands from the water. They end up rescuing the diver as Hen performs a risky procedure to save him.
We also get to see Athena as a detective, and she is a natural for this role. One of my favorite things about Athena is her sense of getting to the truth of it all, and this is evident in her case in this episode. A man with burns is dumped outside of the hospital while she’s visiting May (we’re SO excited about the Nurse May storyline!), and Athena immediately jumps into action and asks to be put on the case. The man who was dumped, Corbett, is in the ICU, and they found an engagement ring in his pocket. She ends up tracking down the van that dumped him, and notices two men working there who have burns on them and apprehends them. The case seems open and shut when they quickly confess to an accident, but Athena’s gut tells her that’s not the story. She ends up finding video that tracks the men to a jewelry store, where she discovers they have robbed the place. They entered the vault from underground, and Athena climbs down there, unaware of all of the things happening with the sinkhole. When it erupts, Athena is still underground as things explode around her.
As the team gets called back out to the sinkhole to help with evacuations as the sinkhole expands (and emits a high-pitched noise), it erupts, spewing lava into the air as the episode ends.
All of the scenes, especially the opening minutes at the sinkhole, are incredibly well shot and cinematic. It felt like you were watching a high-budget disaster film. It was able to showcase all of the responders wonderfully and made you feel like you were right in the middle of the chaos with them.
Also in the episode, aside from everything tied to the disaster, we get a glimpse of Buck’s life with Theo. Eddie rushes into the hospital where Buck is being attended to with a broken nose. Theo is there as well. Buck brushes it off as the nurse tells Eddie that Buck has had four non-work-related hospital visits. Buck tries to brush it off, saying he fell (and, rightfully so, the nurse is questioning that story), but ends up telling Eddie that Theo hit him accidentally. Eddie is seeing that Buck doesn’t have boundaries or tells Theo no, which makes him concerned.
Later in the episode, we see Buck, Eddie, Theo, and Christopher at Eddie’s house having dinner. While Buck, Eddie, and Christopher are at the table, Theo is wreaking havoc on the house. Christopher gets up, saying he has a car in his room that Theo could play with, and Theo ends up hitting a basketball that knocks Christopher over. Eddie and Buck rush to Christopher, who tells them he’s fine, but Eddie’s clearly frustrated with Buck and how he’s parenting Theo.
I’m excited to see how this storyline plays out. We know Buck has had a troubled upbringing with the way his parents raised him and Maddie, and it will be interesting how Eddie is going to be able to help Buck parent Theo.
This episode flew by quickly, and as a fan of 9-1-1 for years, I really think they’re putting their all into Season 10. This is one of their best disaster premiere episodes ever, and it’s only going to get more intense (judging from the trailers we’ve seen) as the entire team continues to navigate a volcano in Los Angeles.
9-1-1 continues to be the best television show on network television, and starting season 10 like this, there’s no chance of them slowing down.
9-1-1 airs Thursday nights on ABC, and you can watch it the next day on Hulu/Disney+.