Note: This story contains spoilers from “9-1-1” Season 8, Episode 10.
While “9-1-1” fans were relieved that Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) was saved before her crazed kidnapper (Abigail Spencer) could kill her, Thursday night’s episode still ended on a sad note as Buck (Oliver Stark) watched best friend Eddie (Ryan Guzman) leave for Texas.
Of course, Guzman isn’t actually leaving the series, as showrunner Tim Minear has already made clear, but Eddie’s absence will be felt in L.A. as he tries to reconnect with his son Christopher (Gavin McHugh) in El Paso.
“We will be in Texas for a bit. The end goal is to get Eddie back to the 118, but we’ll see what happens,” said Guzman, who said he doesn’t know the timeframe for Eddie’s expected return.
TheWrap spoke with Guzman about what we can expect from Eddie’s time in Texas, why this move is so hard on Buck and what it would take to get both Eddie and Chris back in L.A.
TheWrap: It was hard to see Buck and Eddie snapping at each other about the move, but I’m glad they patched things up before Eddie left.
Ryan Guzman: Buck’s the type of person who holds people close to his heart. The 118 is definitely close to his heart, whether it be Bobby, Eddie or Chimney, or any of the characters. That’s his family, because we’ve all seen his tumultuous life with his real family. But he’s going through a lot with Maddie being kidnapped and Eddie moving and kind of taking the mat from underneath his feet.
It did seem for a minute that this might be the end of their friendship.
Buck doesn’t usually act mature in those situations. In the last episode, he made it more about himself and only in the last couple of scenes, do we realize, “Oh, he’s making amends.” Now he’s taking over [Eddie’s] lease and allowing his brother to fix that relationship with his kid. It goes back and forth between Buck and Eddie, but at the end of the day, they only want the best for each other.
There’s a lot of chaos going on in Buck’s life, and at the same time, he still garners enough respect and love for Eddie that he says, “You’ve got to do your own thing. I can’t hold you back.” That’s another evolution of the relationship.
What will Buck be doing while Eddie is in Texas?
There’s still some tension and unease on Buck’s side, and I believe that plays into the next couple episodes. He will be getting comfortable in Eddie’s house for a bit, and he’ll be making it his own.
But as far as Eddie goes, Eddie has got one thing on his mind and one thing only, and that’s salvaging the relationship between him and his son. And then stepping back into the role of being a father and not allowing his parents to do too much of that for him.
How is the relationship when he first gets to Texas with Christopher after all this time?
Through the FaceTimes they’ve done, he’s gotten some breakthroughs. He gets a smile every now and then he gets Christopher to talk to him, and it seems like there is some progression. So when he comes back to Texas, he isn’t having to fight off this memory of Christopher just thinking about the ghost of his dead mother. It’s more reintegrating his life with Christopher and showing that he can be the dad he promised.
And I’m sure Eddie’s butting heads with his parents.
Who doesn’t butt heads with their parents? I’ve seen it in my own parents and my other side’s parents, the grandparents, that this is their second run at being a parents, so they get to do all the things they never could do with their own kids and spoil them. And Eddie will be seeing that and kind of be afraid if he’s losing his fatherly rights.
I’m glad that Eddie and his dad (George DelHoyo) got some type of clarity in their relationship a couple seasons back, they have grown quite a bit. What will be showcased more now is the relationship between Eddie and his mother (Paula Marshall). She’s had her sly comments in the past about moving to L.A. These comments really hit Eddie very hard, and they’re very poignant. The next obstacle will be how Eddie maneuvers around these types of ideologies, where his own mother thinks she knows what’s best for his son.
How good is Eddie going to be about staying in touch with Buck now that he’s a few states away?
They’re best friends, like my best friends I talk to every single day, if not every other day. But they stay in touch all the time. You’re going to be seeing a lot of Buck and Eddie being each other’s sounding board.
You hadn’t actually worked with Gavin in a few months in person because of this storyline.
It had been a while, so he’d already grown another couple inches and his voice got deeper. I’ve actually seen this kid grow up right in front of my eyes. I start to correlate it to my own children. I’m like, “Oh, my God, I’ve got to take advantage of the time I have right now with them, or else in the blink of an eye, there ‘ll be teenagers talking about some crazy thing that I can’t keep up with.”
How hard will be it be to try to convince Chris to come back to L.A. with him?
In the last couple of episodes, we see that he’s starting to find his own routine and regimen with the chess club and his own friends and playing at the pool.
So that’ll be the biggest obstacle for Eddie. As much as he would love to go back to the 118 and his life there, he is dealing with this new reality. Getting his son to pull up his roots again and replant him back in L.A. is going to be the hardest thing in the world.
“9-1-1” airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT and streams the next day on Hulu.
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