What To Know
- Eddie experiences a profound loss in the latest 9-1-1 episode.
- Buck, coping with Bobby’s death, believes he is receiving signs from him in his new house, including when it comes to his snickerdoodle recipe.
- Athena struggles with her son Harry’s desire to become a firefighter, leading to emotional conversations.
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for 9-1-1 Season 9 Episode 5 ” Día de los Muertos.”]
“Are they really gone if we still hold them in our hearts, if we remember?” Eddie (Ryan Guzman) wonders of the dead as a Dia de Muertos procession passes him to bookend the latest 9-1-1 episode.
“I know death. I’ve seen it. Felt it. Fought it,” his voiceover opens the episode. “I’ve saved some people I never knew and lost others whose names I’ll never forget. One way or the other, they all haunt you.”
This 9-1-1 episode does what the show does so well: feature a mix of borderline ridiculous calls and heartfelt, character-driven moments. For example, the emergencies include a giant inflatable pumpkin that Athena (Angela Bassett) tases, a headless horseman hitting a man who then thinks he’s dead (walking corpse syndrome), and an exorcism (for a young woman who just had tetanus). On the other hand, there are emotional storylines for Eddie, Buck (Oliver Stark), and Athena. And the latest death? Well, it’s an emotional one, taking a character who was introduced years ago.
When Eddie’s abuela (Ana Mercedes) and Aunt Pepa (Terri Hoyos) — two characters introduced back in Season 2 — are over, they find the Bible that Bobby left him along with a rosary on top of his fridge. He has gone to a few masses and doesn’t want to make a big deal out of it. He admits he doesn’t know if he’s doing it for himself or Bobby. He does go to a weekday morning mass with his grandmother. He “rebelled” because he never felt God’s presence, and he’s there on a Wednesday only for her because he loves her. But she tells him that he doesn’t need to look for a sign of God’s presence at church but rather in his heart.
Disney/Christopher Willard
After seeing the way parents locked up their daughter with tetanus, however, he starts losing the part of him that was open to people experiencing things that can’t be explained (like Buck thinking Bobby’s haunting his house, more on that shortly). That changes, however, when he wakes up one morning to his son Christopher (Gavin McHugh) telling him he saw abuela the night before and she told him not to be afraid, that she loved him … and yes, this is going where it seems. Pepa calls to tell Eddie that his abuela died. Eddie joins Pepa at his abuela’s bedside; it’ll be a few hours before someone from a funeral home comes to get her. While they wait, Eddie suggests they pray together.
The aforementioned Dia de Muertos parade passes by just as Eddie’s abuela’s body is taken away. “The first day of a loss isn’t the hardest. There’s too damn much to do, people to call, arrangements to make,” Eddie notes in a voiceover. “Too busy to remember, too overwhelmed to let go.”
He continues, “Sadness is for tomorrow, when finally you’re alone heartbroken and angry in the quiet and silence, until you realize you’re never really alone at all.” And with that, he and Christopher set up an altar for his abuela, Christopher’s mother Shannon, and Bobby. When Christopher shares that he wants to do this every year, Eddie’s surprised. No, it doesn’t make him too sad because it’s like they’re still here, his son explains.
Meanwhile, Buck’s finally unpacking in his new house — it took four months to find it, then another three to get the previous tenant to move out — and making Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) be the taste-tester for his attempt at making Bobby’s famous snickerdoodle cookies from memory. When he reveals he’s hearing noises at night, wondering if it’s squirrels in the attic, she teases him that it’s a ghost, suggesting she’s “sensing paranormal energies in the air,” and making us think of Hewitt’s Ghost Whisperer. When she comes across a framed photo of Buck with Bobby, her brother shares, “I really miss him.” She sets it up on a shelf where Bobby can help inspire him in the kitchen.
Disney/Christopher Willard
At night, Buck wakes to a noise and something breaking and finds the plate of cookies on the floor and cream of tartar — the missing ingredient — next to it. As he tells the others when he shares his new batch with them, he’s taken it as a sign that Bobby told him what he needed. The others, except for Eddie (“Who hurt you, shapeshifter?” Kenneth Choi‘s Chimney demands), are skeptical. “It’s Bobby,” Buck insists. “Tell him we miss him,” Hen (Aisha Hinds) says, speaking for everyone on and offscreen.
When Eddie turns down an invite for him and Christopher to join him for an attempt to talk to Bobby with a Ouija board, Buck enlists Ravi (Anirudh Pisharody) — who’s dressed as Raggedy Andy because he thought they’d be going to a party. (It’s a great costume.) Ravi spells out a message for Buck (“You’re an idiot”), then the two find that the previous tenant had been living in the attic. Buck, upset that he’d thought it was Bobby haunting him, decides he wants to press charges. As for the cream of tartar, the guy says the cookies were dull.
But after Buck finds a sobriety chip in the attic — “Hey, cap” — he drops the charges and instead is there when the guy is released by the police to tell him about a meeting nearby.
Elsewhere, Harry (Elijah M. Cooper) moves into Athena’s, into the room where she’d just be storing everything, including a box of Bobby’s things from the LAFD. He agreed to move in, and she agreed to be open to him joining the fire department. While May (Corinne Massiah) argues that he doesn’t need her permission, he says he wants it and for their mom to be proud of him.
But Athena does not react well (understandably) when she comes home to find Harry in Bobby’s turnouts, which somehow aren’t as big on him as they should be, as a costume. As she sees it, it’s a sign he’s not ready because they’re not a costume and the fact that he thinks it is tells her he’s not mature enough for the job. Later, Harry finds her looking at Bobby’s turnouts. “You sure left your mark. You were a good man, a good husband,” Athena says. “You loved and inspired my kids. I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive you for that.” But Harry reminds her he was a son of a first responder long before he met Bobby. Becoming a firefighter isn’t about him, “it’s about being like you,” he says.
What did you think of the latest episode and 9-1-1 killing off Eddie’s abuela? Let us know in the comments section below.
9-1-1, Thursdays, 8/7c, ABC
