The very long wait for 9-1-1: Lone Star to return to Fox is nearly over, more than a year after the Season 4 finale aired with Carlos and T.K. tying the knot. The fifth and final season picks up in the 2024 TV schedule with a time jump of almost exactly a year, and a lot has happened for the characters (including one who won’t be back). I spoke with executive producer and co-showrunner Rashad Raisani ahead of the Season 5 premiere, and he addressed the kinds of conflicts ahead for Tarlos. The good news? Some of his phrasing leads me to think that fans shouldn’t fret too much.
The Season 5 premiere is called “Both Sides, Now” and will have a year’s worth of changes to explain pretty quickly. Rashad Raisani explained the reasoning for the major time jump, saying that they didn’t know the premiere date when they were writing or filming the new episodes, but a “calendar year had a lot of good story ramifications for us, and it felt like a nice, clean amount of time.” The time jump picks up “just before Carlos and T.K.'s first year anniversary.”
Of course, while T.K. and Carlos did end Season 4 happily with their wedding, it was at the end of a tear-jerking finale full of complications with the death of Carlos’ father, and Carlos is following in his father’s footsteps by becoming a Texas Ranger for Season 5. When I noted to the co-showrunner that the couple never seems to go long without running into some kind of obstacle, he detailed how they’re doing as a married couple when the season begins:
They're doing well, but for me, the marriage was never the end of their story. It was always, I still hope, closer to the beginning of their story. Because in real life, weddings are great, but real life is much more about a marriage than a wedding. Even though these are two, I think by all accounts, wonderful human beings who are good people, they still – like all human beings – have points of conflict, and some of them can be rather significant.
Whether one of those points of conflict will concern Carlos’ new Texas Ranger colleague Campbell remains to be seen, but as Rashad Raisani noted, the wedding in the Season 4 finale (available streaming now with a Hulu subscription) was the beginning of a new chapter for Tarlos. The co-showrunner elaborated on how T.K. and Carlos have differing perspectives in Season 5:
With Carlos, we designed it so that he has a lot of reasons to look backwards. He wants to find his dad's killer, that he's stuck in that moment in the past, that he needs to figure that out. Whereas T.K. has always wanted to be a dad, he's always wanted to have a big family, and he's really looking down at the future. He wants to leave the past behind. At the same time, they both want to show each other a lot of grace, like we all do with our partners when relationships are going well, but there always comes a flashpoint where somebody has been patient long enough.
While this doesn’t sound great for Tarlos, it does sound compelling to watch as a fan of 9-1-1: Lone Star. Plus, based on how the co-showrunner finished his preview of what’s ahead for Carlos and T.K., this “flashpoint” doesn’t seem like something that will ruin them after everything they’ve endured together. Raisani concluded:
Now they'll have to kind of self-advocate and speak up, and so we are going to get the guys to that place for both of them, and see how they handle that kind of adversity. But my feeling is that that kind of adversity is not something that you should try and avoid in life. It's something that actually builds you up and makes you stronger and makes your relationship more resilient and rich, and frankly, more beautiful, for having gone through some of life's sufferings rather than avoided it.
Stronger, richer, and more beautiful? Sign me up for this as the future of Tarlos, if that’s the direction that 9-1-1: Lone Star goes with them! Only time will tell how soon any issues between them will come up, though, as it looks like a train derailment is going to cause some life-and-death problems pretty early on. Take a look:
Would it really be a final season-opener of Lone Star if there was only one emergency? A train wreck as well as a poison cloud of death certainly sounds like a reward for fans who have been waiting more than a year for the show to return… if not quite a reward for any of the characters who will be dealing with it.
Tune in to Fox on Monday, September 23 at 8 p.m. ET for the Season 5 premiere of 9-1-1: Lone Star, ahead of the time slot premiere of freshman series Rescue: HI-Surf. New episodes will be available streaming via Hulu.
