9-1-1 boss on that Buck kiss: What it means, how it almost didn't happen, and what's next

WARNING: This article contains spoilers for 9-1-1 season 7, episode 4, titled "Buck, Bothered and Bewildered."

9-1-1 co-creator and showrunner Tim Minear threw fans a curveball on Thursday — but the twist came as a surprise to him, too.

Season 7, episode 4 ended with an unexpected kiss between Buck (Oliver Stark) and former 118er Tommy (Lou Ferigno Jr.). Stark tells Entertainment Weekly he feels the groundwork was laid over seasons, but Minear admits they didn't decide to explore Buck's bisexuality until just a few weeks ago.

"I think the idea had been gestating for a while, but I don't really plan things out in advance too much. I never have," Minear tells EW. "It's part of the function of production being such a grind, and you're always a little bit behind, so you're always writing to keep up. You're just laying down the track in front of the moving train half the time."

Part of that moving train was figuring out how the 118 would make their way to Bobby and Athena out on that sinking cruise ship last week. Minear originally planned for Lucy (Arielle Kebbel) to be their helicopter pilot. But when Kebbel wasn't available, he had to pivot.

"So I went to the next logical place, which was Tommy. It's even mentioned in [the season 2 episode] Broken that he's the one who does the water drop. We don't see him on screen, but it's Chimney who calls him. So it felt like, 'Okay, well here's a character who's actually been in the show that I don't know that much about,'" he says. "So I thought, 'Lou's really interesting. I wonder if he would feel comfortable going down this road....'"

So, with Lou on board, where is this Buck train heading? The 9-1-1 mastermind shares how this storyline came to be and what's next for his first responder drama.

Why was Lou's buy in so important?

I thought, "If I'm going to do this story with Buck, [what] I don't want to do is the mistake that I think we've made with some of the other love interests, which is siloing those characters off into their love life and they have no kind of organic connection to the rest of the characters in the story. When I brought Jennifer Love Hewitt in [as 9-1-1 dispatcher Maddie], I decided to make her Buck's sister, because I'd found in the first season it was very hard to create scenes with [Connie Britton's] Abby, because she had no connection to the other characters. Going with Tommy allowed us to start to play a story without just inventing a whole new character just for the purpose of being the bi character or the gay character or the male love interest for Buck. It was during the construction of the three-part cruise ship arc that I started to feel there was an opportunity here.

When do you think Buck realizes he has feelings for Tommy?

This episode, I was excited to play a story about Buck being jealous of his best friend being stolen by a guy who's kind of like a cooler version of Buck, at least in Buck's head. So that's the story that you think you're watching. That's the story that Buck thinks he's in. That is not the story. When the episode starts, Buck has reached out to this guy off camera and said, "Hey, can you show me around the place?" And even in that scene, Tommy's like, "You're looking to switch things up." We know Buck's not going to leave the 118, so why does he want to come back and see all the toys and the choppers? Well, because he thinks this guy is really cool. There's something about this guy that is drawing Buck in, and I don't think Buck is super aware of exactly what that is.

Even when Buck goes to Maddie after he hurts Eddie on the basketball court, he says to her, "I was jealous. He was so tight with Tommy after a couple of weeks, and I really felt left out. And I guess I was just trying to get his attention." I never say he's trying to get Eddie's attention. He's trying to get somebody's attention. And I think it's in that moment in the loft when he says, "Trying to get your attention has been a little exhausting" — it's in that moment where Buck realizes, "Yeah, I guess so. I guess this has been about you the whole time."

Was it always Tommy who kissed Buck and not the other way around?

I don't think it's until Tommy takes the initiative and kisses him that suddenly everything becomes super clear for Buck. And you can see it in Oliver's performance. It was a really important moment for me, and I just wanted to make sure I got it right, that it didn't feel like Tommy was a predator. But I also felt like it wasn't right for Buck to initiate that kiss. It kind of had to be the guy who was out, who was more mature, who'd kind of been around the block and who was picking up the signals that Buck was sending, even if Buck was not sure that he was sending those signals. That was the way it was structured in my head.

Oliver has told us that next week's episode will explore Buck "questioning" his new feelings. What else can you tease?

It's not so much Buck grappling, but discovering something about himself that he didn't know before, and exploring what that means. To me, it was a really ripe opportunity for just good story. It's just a way to play. You can always play like, "Then he meets a girl and then they hang out and then she moves in." And if it's the right girl, it's great. But this just felt like a much more interesting story, at least for me, to tell.

9-1-1 airs Thursdays at 8 p.m ET/PT on ABC.

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