The fifth and final season of 9-1-1: Lone Star kicked off on Fox in the 2024 TV schedule after a one-year time jump, the departure of a star, and a major crisis on the way with a train derailment. Unlike when 9-1-1 was cancelled and then immediately picked up by ABC to switch networks, no such rescue seems to be in the cards for the Texas-set spinoff. CinemaBlend spoke with Lone Star co-showrunner and executive producer Rashad Raisani about the upcoming end, and he got candid about getting the cancellation news.
While Season 5 will have time to pack in some adversity for Tarlos, only a total of twelve episodes were produced for 9-1-1: Lone Star’s swan song season. After admitting that the storyline of Grace leaving Judd was “hard to buy,” Raisani had this to say when I asked how far into the season the team was when they got the news that the end was nigh:
To be honest, we didn't. I should say it wasn't official until I saw a trailer a couple weeks ago on Fox. It said 'the final season.' That was when it became official for me. That was after we wrapped. That's the official side of it. In terms of having the writing on the wall, the writing was on the wall even before the strikes, because as we wrapped Season 4, we knew we were going into our final season of this contract between Disney and Fox.
Evidently, the Season 5 finale wasn’t planned as the series finale since the show wrapped before the official cancellation news. That said, Lone Star’s upcoming end didn’t come out of nowhere for the team after the WGA writers strike and SAG-AFTRA actors strike of late 2023. The executive producer continued:
We knew that the chances of particularly show like ours, which has a rather large budget – especially in this current environment, because we have big action, we have a big cast – we knew it was going to be a challenge, and perhaps an insurmountable challenge, to bring the show back. When we're owned by Disney and we're airing on Fox, just from a financial, numbers, purely business standpoint, it didn't make a lot of sense for these two companies to find a way to work together to make this continue to happen.
9-1-1: Lone Star certainly does have a large ensemble of characters, and Sierra McClain’s departure didn’t really shrink the cast. Wyatt was already set up with an increased presence in the Season 5 premiere (which you can stream with a Hulu subscription), and Suburgatory’s Parker Young joined the cast to play a character important to Carlos’ story.
Plus, episodes don’t turn out to be “like mini-movies,” to quote Rob Lowe, without a big budget behind them, and the numbers just didn’t work between Disney and Fox for a sixth season of Lone Star. Rashad Raisani noted that the state of the business was different when the show was in the planning stages in 2019, saying:
Whereas, if we had been at the same studio network as when the show first started – before the Disney merger, it was a 20th show for Fox when it was conceived – maybe there would have been more of a path to figure it out if we had been in that situation.
9-1-1: Lone Star ultimately premiered in early 2020, just a couple months before the entertainment industry more or less shut down due to COVID-19. It was less than a year after the merger between Disney and 21st Century Fox became official. To the show’s credit, it has gone strong through some major obstacles, including COVID-19 and the strikes.
Rashad Raisani confirmed that he’s “immensely proud” of the finished product of Season 5, and all signs point toward an exciting final batch of episodes. See what’s in store for the characters with the final season of 9-1-1: Lone Star on Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on Fox, ahead of freshman series Rescue: HI-Surf at 9 p.m. ET. You can also revisit earlier seasons of Lone Star streaming via Hulu now.
