Warning: spoilers ahead for Episode 6 of 9-1-1: Lone Star Season 5, called "Naked Truth."
9-1-1: Lone Star hit the halfway point of its fifth and final season in the 2024 TV schedule with "Naked Truth," which seemed to be setting Nancy up for a tearjerking story to last for the rest of the series. Instead, Nancy went from expecting the worst with Tommy as her support to Nancy getting the best news possible while Tommy's future is uncertain. Tommy has breast cancer, which is of course terrible for the character and her loved ones... but I'm already excited to see Gina Torres flexing her acting muscles for the storyline.
In a twist of fate, Tommy only learned of her breast cancer when she scheduled a mammogram for no reason other than to join Nancy in the waiting room and lend her support when she needed somebody other than Mateo to lean on. The episode (available streaming with a Hulu subscription) pretty perfectly set up a breast cancer arc for Nancy, up to and including the deaths of women in her family from the same diagnosis.
So, it was a bit of an emotional gut punch when "Naked Truth" revealed the wonderful news for Nancy just before the awful news for Tommy, foreshadowed only by the nuances in Gina Torres' performance as Tommy built herself up to revealing the results of her own mammogram. There was something just a little bit off with Tommy as soon as she answered the door, and she was clearly very genuinely thrilled for Nancy that her own diagnosis was of just a cyst. Once Nancy clocked that something was wrong, though, Tommy finally admitted it:
I was on a call earlier with my doctor about my mammogram. She said that they found something. It's... it's bad. It's bad, Nancy.
Tommy more than deserved the hug she got from Nancy as she began to cry, not least because her daughters were just in another room. The promo for the next episode also proves that 9-1-1: Lone Star is going to dig into how "bad" it actually is for Tommy, confirming that her diagnosis is of breast cancer and that she'll need to walk away from the 126. Take a look:
Well, here's hoping that Owen really did take care of his sleepwalking/sleeptalking/sleep-choking issue in "Naked Truth," because Tommy might need all the support she can get as the final season continues! He's always there for his firefighters when they need him, including when Marjan withdrew her name from the running for lieutenant so Paul would be guaranteed the promotion), as well as for Judd before he had decided to come back to the 126 with Gracie (and actress Sierra McClain) absent. Hopefully Tommy can count on his support as well; it certainly looks like she'll have Nancy by her side.
All in all, we can only wait and see what 9-1-1: Lone Star has in store for Tommy with the final six episodes of the entire series, but I'm already confident that Gina Torres is going to crush the material and I'm looking forward to watching (and maybe even tearing up a bit) as Season 5 continues. Keep tuning in to Fox on Mondays at 8 p.m. ET for new episodes of 9-1-1: Lone Star, or stream with a Hulu subscription. 9-1-1 is currently airing its nerve-wracking eighth season on Thursdays over on ABC.
