9-1-1 almost lost one of its own on Thursday’s Halloween episode when Hen found herself responding to a near-fatal accident involving… her son?!
“[The Wilson family] literally didn’t even get one episode off to be happy,” Aisha Hinds (aka Hen) tells TVLine with a laugh. “At the end of last week’s episode, we had this beautiful montage where we were all together [after being separated] and now we’re right back in the depths of danger.”
As far as danger goes, it doesn’t get much deeper than Denny (Declan Pratt) nearly dying after being pinned against a house by a car while out trick-or-treating. Hen responded as any terrified mother would, racing into action to save her child’s life, resulting in one of the show’s most harrowing moments in recent memory.
Hinds attributes the powerful scene to the close relationship she and Pratt have nurtured over eight seasons. “That makes it a lot easier — almost too easy sometimes,” she says of bringing their mother-son bond to life on screen. “There are moments where I’m actually trying to hold back my emotions, but then I look over at him and my just heart swells.”
It doesn’t hurt that Hinds also has a close relationship with Pratt’s mother Dennisha, who has been a constant presence on set for the entire run of the show. Hinds recalls Dennisha checking in with her son during this particular shoot, giving him an “Are you OK?” thumbs-up without saying a word. “I saw her do that, and I saw him make eye contact, and that relationship literally jumped into my body,” Hinds explains. “I felt like I had to continue to make sure he was OK.”
“Declan and I talk about all the technical stuff and we go over every one of his scenes together, but when he goes on set, I no longer see him as Declan — that’s Hen’s son,” Dennisha tells TVLine. “I’m standing nearby if he needs me for anything, but I try to stay out of everyone’s way.”
Despite the Wilsons’ near-constant stream of family crises, Hinds notes that there’s a definite silver lining to their struggles: “The strength of this family is incredible,” she says. “Not only do all of these experiences bring them closer together, but then they go and help other people. It’s beautiful to see that as dark as things get, it’s almost like a slingshot — as far back as you pull the tension, that’s how much love is going to come out when you release.”
And the evening wasn’t all doom and gloom for the Wilson family. Along with Jee-Yun, they did get to live out their full Wizard of Oz fantasies by dressing up as Dorothy and the gang.
“It was easily one of my favorite episodes to work on because of the lengths they went to create these costumes,” Hinds says. “Shoutout to our hair, makeup and wardrobe teams that did an incredible job. They did their big one on this one, as the kids say.”
Needless to say, Karen will be a lot more understanding about Hen having to miss the “big” events because of her job from now on. “Karen tells her, ‘I just kept thinking while you were working on our son, thank God you were at work,’” showrunner Tim Minear reminds TVLine. “The way Tracie Thoms landed that line, that encapsulated everything I wanted to do this episode for.”
With the Wilson family safe (for now), we turn our attention to this week’s other dramatic development: Buck is cursed! In procuring a corpse dummy for the 118’s haunted house, Buck accidentally purchased an actual corpse, that of an abandoned outlaw known as “Billy Boyles.” When literal boils began to appear on his face, Buck did his research — you know, instead of just going to a dermatologist — and deduced that he was a victim of Billy’s curse.
The episode ended with Buck realizing that Billy wasn’t just randomly “cursing” people; he was crying for help because he’d been abandoned by his friends when he was alive. By visiting Billy’s grave and acknowledging his pain, Buck believed that the curse would lift and his boils would vanish. (Again, nary a phone call to the dermatologist.)
Though Buck was still afflicted at the end of the hour, Minear confirms that Buck did break the curse. “Tommy may have helped,” Minear adds, reminding us that “Tommy was skeptical the entire time, but at the very end he sort of says to the grave, ‘Please lift the curse.’”
