9-1-1 season 9 is sending Hen and Athena for a joyride into the cosmos — whether they like it or not.
In Us Weekly’s exclusive first look at the season 9 trailer, released on Thursday, October 2, Hen (Aisha Hinds) gets offered the opportunity of a lifetime when (evil) CEO Tripp Houser (Mark Consuelos) offers to send her into space.
It all starts with the 118 rushing to save Tripp after an accident involving a kayak and a whale leaves him in peril. “Part of what makes someone an everyday hero is the willingness to save lives,” Ryan Guzman’s Eddie says at the top of the teaser before it flashes to Tripp appearing to get swallowed by the sea creature.
After Eddie dives into the ocean and brings him to safety, Hen performs CPR on Tripp, who regains consciousness to tell her, “You saved me from that fish.” She replies, “It’s a mammal, sir.”
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Tripp then becomes determined to “reward” Hen for her act of heroics, although she claims she was just doing her “job.” He offers her two seats on a shuttle headed for the cosmos — an experience Hen hopes to share with her wife, Karen (Tracie Thoms).
“Tripp Hauser is sending you to space?” Karen asks, to which Hen responds excitedly, “And you’re coming with me.” Karen, however, is not interested. “I’m a serious scientist,” she says. “Tripp Houser doesn’t care about serious science. I can’t go into space.”
Hen then extends the invite to BFF Athena (Angela Bassett), who immediately turns down the offer. “You want me to come with you to space? Absolutely not!” she declares before the teaser cuts to the two women in space gear. “I cannot believe you talked me into this,” Athena says while shaking her head.
As the twosome prepare to jet off, the rest of the 118 stay down on Earth and watch through TV updates. “Tripp Houser has assembled five everyday heroes for this historic flight,” an announcer says as Athena, Hen and their fellow passengers head to their spacecraft in slow motion.
As they prepare for takeoff, Tripp is alerted to a “geomagnetic storm” that could be dangerous. While his cohorts urge him to “scrub” the launch, he refuses.
“Punch it,” he demands as the spacecraft bursts off into the atmosphere.
Things quickly take a turn for the worse when Tripp reveals all “contact has been lost” with the spacecraft thanks to a “sudden” geomagnetic storm, sending Los Angeles into chaos.
“What do you guys think is going on out there?” Athena’s son, Harry (Elijah M. Cooper), asks the 118 crew. “The end of the world,” Chimney (Kenneth Choi) replies.
Chimney then leads the way as the 118 puts boots to the ground to help civilians survive multiple catastrophes from sky-falling meteors and Tripp gets called out for knowing about the storm and pursuing the launch anyway.
“One thing I know about our moms? They never give up,” Athena’s daughter, May (Corinne Massiah), promises Hen’s kids as the screen flashes to Hen trying to pull Athena back into the rocket as she nearly floats out to space.
While the 118 will be faced with plenty of natural disasters when the ABC series returns on Thursday, October 9, they’ll also still be reeling from the aftermath of Captain Bobby Nash’s (Peter Krause) death. The season 9 premiere, titled “Eat the Rich,” will see Athena, Eddie, Chimney, Eddie, Buck (Oliver Stark) and more come together to “dedicate the firehouse in his memory,” the official logline reads.
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The 118 will be renamed “Captain Robert W. Nash Memorial Station 118.”
“It just felt fitting and right,” showrunner Tim Minear told Entertainment Weekly last month of honoring Bobby/Krause. “There’s a balance you have to strike. You don’t want to come in and feel like everything is just going to be sad from here on out, but Bobby’s memory should be blessed. And this is a thing that fire departments do in real life. They will name a fire station after a fallen hero. I think the idea that this will always be ‘Bobby’s house’ is kind of beautiful, and not depressing.”
9-1-1 season 9 premieres on ABC Thursday, October 9, at 8 p.m. ET. Stream episodes the next day on Hulu.
