9-1-1: Lone Star boss on that 'gut-wrenching' injury — and who was almost in peril instead
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There's nothing like tragedy to make you realize what matters most.
Tuesday's episode of 9-1-1: Lone Star, "A House Divided," saw Judd (Jim Parrack) and Tommy (Gina Torres) at extreme odds with one another until Judd's son, Wyatt (Jackson Pace), is injured — a twist co-creator and showrunner Tim Minear says was the only way to resolve the tension without creating a "villain."
"We loved the idea of exploring how conflict erupts between these two people who are really right," Minear tells EW. "But how do you then resolve it? Who's the first one to say 'I'm sorry,' because you're writing a story that's about two of your heroes, so one of them can't really be a villain. Both have to have a point of view that is defensible. So how do you resolve all that? And it seemed to me that the best way to resolve it would be something else happening that is more important."
Minear and the team knew the answer was family, but contemplated a few different options before landing on Wyatt as the victim.
"I was going to have, maybe [Judd's infant daughter] Charlie ends up in the hospital, or one of Tommy's twins," Minear says. But then the showrunner realized he had the perfect option in Wyatt, who quit college earlier in the season to follow in Judd's footsteps at the 126.
Kevin Estrada/FOX Jim Parrack as Judd on '9-1-1: Lone Star'
"It's one of those things where, as a writer, you realize you set up the ending at the beginning," says Minear. "We could have gone down the road of Wyatt joining another firehouse, but we did that with [Chimney's brother] Albert on 9-1-1 and I didn't want to repeat myself. So I realized that this is a way to service the Wyatt story that I've started, and to solve the dilemma between Tommy and Judd."
Well, that's "the intellectual reason," he explains. "The emotional reason was that it felt real, and it felt right, and it felt surprising. It's gut-wrenching. And in the subsequent scenes, how Judd deals with it and how Wyatt deals with it — and how they're going to deal with this thing going forward…. The way it changes everything for this particular group of characters is super rich and incredibly moving."
9-1-1: Lone Star airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Fox.
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