Oliver Stark Unpacks ‘9-1-1’ Season 8 Finale And What’s Next For Buck

🚨🚨🚨Warning: This article contains spoilers from the “9-1-1” Season Eight finale, “Seismic Shifts.”🚨🚨🚨

In typical “9-1-1” fashion, Season Eight ended with a bang — well, several.

After starting the season with a bee-nado (a tornado composed of bees, for anyone wondering), the Season Eight finale saw the 118 race to a more familiar scene: an infrastructure collapse.

The 118, still reeling without its captain, splits off in pairs at the scene of the high-rise building collapse, with Henrietta “Hen” Wilson (Aisha Hinds) and Howard “Chimney” Han (Kenneth Choi) rescuing several tenants, as Evan “Buck” Buckley (Oliver Stark) and Ravi Panikkar (Anirudh Pisharody) go to what’s left of the upper levels.

LAPD Sgt. Athena Grant (Angela Bassett) was on scene when the apartment complex started crumbling down. She rushes back in to help, finding two pinned tenants in the building’s laundry room. As their conditions worsen, she sends a survivor to get help, and Chimney joins her.

But with the team still inside, the unsteady building continues to shake, rocked with mini-explosions, leaving Buck and Ravi trapped with a victim and Chimney and Athena’s exit route completely blocked.

For Buck, it marks a very different circumstance than one of the team’s last big emergencies. In Episode 14, all of the 118 were locked inside a lab — except for Buck.

“I think he’s almost more comfortable being trapped as long as he’s able to do his job,” Oliver Stark tells TODAY.com of the finale. “Being on the outside was the most jarring thing for him.”

The lab disaster notably ended with the shocking death of Capt. Bobby Nash (Peter Krause). Quarantined in the lab, members of the 118 were exposed to a deadly virus. Chimney was infected, and he was saved via Athena and Buck’s heroics to acquire an antidote. But Bobby — Athena’s husband — was also infected and died in the lab.

In the finale — back to true “9-1-1” fashion — the 118 and Athena save the day, with no further casualties.

Here’s how it all goes down (literally) — and, as Stark says, how the circumstances are hopefully introducing a more “mature” Buck looking ahead to the show’s already-renewed Season Nine.

How does ‘9-1-1’ Season 8 end?

The 118 has since seemingly fallen apart in the aftermath of Bobby’s death. While they showed a united front at Bobby’s funeral in Episode 16 — with Eddie Diaz (Ryan Guzman) returning from El Paso, Texas, after moving earlier in the season to be with his son — they are each grieving separately in the most recent episodes.

Chimney and Athena, both struggling with Bobby’s sacrifice, can barely stand to be in the same room. Meanwhile, Buck and Eddie have another fight, with Eddie accusing Buck of being selfish about Eddie’s new job opportunity in El Paso amid his grief.

For the 118, Episode 18 opens on a somber note. All gathered at the station, the team throws a going away lunch for Eddie, who’s set to report for duty at an El Paso firehouse the next morning. He’s given his turnout uniform, and he and Chris enjoy one last shared meal with the team. Hen says she’s turned down taking the job of captain, while Buck reveals he’s put in for a transfer.

“Out of the 118?” Eddie asks.

“It’s just a number now,” Buck responds.

The team then heads to the call at the building collapse. Stark says being in the thick of the action is Buck at his best.

“There are different sides of Buck, and some of them are a bit sillier. I don’t know, he’s just like guileless and golden retriever-y, but there is no doubt that he’s an extremely adept firefighter,” Stark says. “So I think him being in the emergency is where he’s going to thrive and be able to do his best. I think it’s a chance as well to see this more mature, calmer, ‘let’s get to work’ version of Buck.”

Eddie’s heroic save

While the rest of team rescues victims, Eddie is packing up his gear and preparing to head to the airport with Chris to go back to Texas. Eddie then sees reports of the building collapse and the search-and-rescue response on the news. Donning his familiar uniform, he heads toward the rubble, just in time to save Buck, Ravi and one of the victims before the building collapses further.

“I was watching the news, had a bit of FOMO,” Eddie tells Buck over the radio, before shooting a line gun to their location, allowing the trio to escape.

Stark says for Buck, that moment of Eddie coming to save the day represents a return to the status quo.

“I think just a case of things getting back to the way they’re meant to be, and as we touched on, maybe never being quite the same, but the steps to repair slowly being built,” Stark tells TODAY.com of Eddie’s save.

The team, Eddie included, then head to rescue Athena, Chimney and their patients. In the end, everyone makes it back alive, with zero civilian casualties from the building collapse.

Is Buck leaving the 118?

After the emergency and back at the station, Chimney notices the team rapidly splitting off despite their success as a united front. Eddie checks his phone looking for a flight back to El Paso while Buck puts away his turnouts. An emboldened Chimney orders everyone to stop moving and tells Eddie he’s not leaving L.A. and Buck that he’s not transferring.

“This is our fire house. This is the 118, and it’s not just a number. It’s us,” an emotional Chimney tells the team. “… Cap is gone. But leaving won’t change that. It won’t make you feel any less sad. It just means that you’ll be sad all alone.”

He rounds out his speech with strict orders for everyone — Buck and Eddie included — to get some rest before reporting for their next shift “right here, together.”

A shocked Hen responds, “Copy that, Cap — I mean, Chim,” suggesting the 118 might not have to look far in Season Nine for its next leader.

Asked what stops Buck from considering leaving the 118, Stark tells TODAY.com, “It’s not really his decision.”

“It’s very much told to him,” Stark says. “‘Put your stuff down. Get to work. This is where we live.’ And it’s what I think everybody needs to hear.”

Is Buck moving?

Eddie being ordered to stay brings in the literal question of living situations.

In Episode Nine, Buck moved into Eddie’s house as a subletter so Eddie could follow Chris to El Paso. Since Eddie’s return to L.A. for the funeral, he’s been staying on Buck’s couch in his old house.

In regards to their dynamic as roommates, Stark jokes, “Apparently they work out who’s going to do the groceries and then they don’t always follow through on that.” (In Episode 17, Buck and Eddie’s fight occurred in the kitchen and started after Buck picked up the groceries though Eddie said he would.)

“They work a lot of hours. That’s the one thing as well. I don’t think they spend a lot of time at home,” he adds of Buck and Eddie’s time as roommates. “So yeah, that is for the audience to fill in the blank for themselves.”

In the final minutes of Episode 18, it’s revealed that Eddie and Chris have moved back, Buck is looking for a new apartment and Athena is putting the now-finished house she had been building with Bobby on the market.

After he’s asked by his realtor why he’s leaving his last place, Buck says, “It wasn’t really mine. I was subletting.”

“Buck is looking for his own place again, and I just think that he’s ready to — kind of the combination of everything’s that’s been happening through the season — the old apartment, the loft, is gone. This is Eddie’s place. Who am I going to be, stand on my own two feet?” Stark says of what Buck is looking for.

A move may prove disheartening to longtime supporters of a potential romance between Buck and Eddie. Earlier in Season Eight, the show introduced the possibility onscreen for the first time after Buck reconnects with his ex, who insinuates he’d be open to getting back together “now that the competition’s (Eddie) is out of the way.” Buck was later point blank asked by sister Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) is he was in love with Eddie, which he adamantly denied.

“You know when something huge happens, your personal dramas, they just, everything falls by the wayside a little bit,” Stark says. “I don’t know if that will be addressed next year or what.”

Asked if Buck continued to think about that question before Bobby’s death, Stark says he thinks Buck “shut it down.”

“I don’t think the idea is that Buck went home and looked in the mirror and said, ‘Wait, am I in love with Eddie?’ I think it came so far out of left field for him when Tommy first said it,” Stark says. “I don’t think the idea is that we were saying Buck now is questioning if that’s true.”

“And, you know, look, (showrunner) Tim (Minear) will make that decision if it is or not,” he adds. “But I don’t think in that moment that the story was now Buck is wondering if he is. I think Buck thought, ‘No, you’re absolutely wrong. What are you talking about?’ And yeah, we’ll go from there.”

Overall, Stark says he hopes Bobby’s death in Season Eight will give him a chance to play a more “mature Buck” going forward.

“I was excited that maybe this could be the thing that helps Buck mature or grow into a different place at a different stage,” he says. “So I think that’s, from my point of view, anyway, what the fallout or the repercussions for Buck will be.”