“Of course she is.” That’s Bobby’s (Peter Krause) response upon learning from Buck (Oliver Stark) that not only is his wife Athena (Angela Bassett) on a plane that’s crashing after a collision with a smaller one due to the millions of bees buzzing around Los Angeles. In other words, it’s just another typical start to a season for 9-1-1.
The bee-nado event continues in Season 8 Episode 2, airing Thursday, October 3 at 8/7c on ABC. And as the promo for “When the Boeing Gets Tough…” shows, Athena’s the one to (and seemingly the only one who can) call in the mayday. “There’s a hole in the plane,” she says. “Tell me that you’ve come up with a plan.”
It looks like that plan is for Athena to land the plane, while everyone else—the 118 and numerous other firehouses—wait on the ground. Of course Bobby’s kept apprised, even though he’s not currently the 118’s captain—though that could change following Gerrard’s (Brian Thompson) near-death experience. Watch the full promo above. Then scroll down and check out the photos for another look at what’s going on with the plane emergency—featuring three actors returning from a Season 5 episode!
“I’m sort of following the same pattern that I generally follow, which is you come in to a season premiere and you have some fun cases that then kind of lead to something bigger that’s maybe not an exact offshoot of the thing you were playing in the premiere episode,” executive producer Tim Minear tells TV Insider. “The bee story collides with the Athena story at the end of the premiere and then it sort of becomes Airport 1975 at that point.”
As for any contact between Bobby and Athena with him on the ground and her in the air, “In the end, Bobby’s always her lifeline. She’s always his lifeline,” says Minear.
Adds Stark, “It’s fun because the bees are in many ways a setup for a much bigger and more epic emergency, and I really love the bees in the first episode. I like it when the show isn’t afraid to be a bit ridiculous. We are making an entertainment television show, and so I love leaning into that. And then it allows us to spiral into something really epic and dramatic. I think this run of episodes is—obviously the cruise ship was great last year—maybe the best opening few episodes that we’ve had in a good few seasons. So I’m really, really excited for it. And I know we say this every year, but I actually mean it this year: I think it’s got bigger and better.”
How do you think this plane emergency will resolve itself next episode? What do you think will come up to lead into the third and final part of the bee-nado event? Let us know in the comments section below.
