[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for 9-1-1 Season 8 Episode 5 “Masks.”]
9-1-1 celebrates Halloween in the way only it can: with hijinks, wild cases, and an emergency that hits way too close to home.
The good news: Hen (Aisha Hinds) and Karen’s (Tracie Thoms) son Denny (Declan Pratt) is going to be okay after getting pinned when a car hits him. Also in this episode, Buck (Oliver Stark) breaks out in boils after accidentally getting a real corpse for the 118’s Halloween festival.
9-1-1‘s Halloween episodes “are always fun,” Stark tells TV Insider in the video interview above. “This one in particular, there was something about it I think because we all got to be in costumes, which I don’t think we’ve done before. That made it feel like an extra fun experience.” Getting the makeup for the boils, however, was not.
“One of the challenges of the episode was trying to then include such a serious emergency and I’m there with boils on my face,” he adds. “We didn’t want to take away from the seriousness of what was going on. So it was about finding ways to tuck me away and not let my ridiculous face take away from the moment.”
Disney / Ray Mickshaw
Buck does spiral a bit after the boils appear, which both his boyfriend Tommy (Lou Ferrigno Jr.) and Eddie (Ryan Guzman) witness. While Buck has grown over the years, “this feels a little bit like early Buck, which I like,” admits Stark. “He still overreacts and he still falls victim to hyperbole and goes to the extreme with everything. I don’t know if this is a great example of his growth, but to me, that’s fun and that’s something that’s quite true to life. We never completely lose traits of ourselves. We just learn to mitigate and quiet them.”
Tommy witnessed Buck’s spiraling in this episode, and Stark teases there’s more of that to come, specifically in the next episode, and he’ll be getting advice from Bobby (Peter Krause). “I like when Buck gets too in his own head and goes to people around him to ask questions and advice,” he says. “Buck is going to learn more about Tommy’s past and that is going to send him into somewhat of a spiral. And yeah, he’ll have to lean on those around him and get some really, I think, quite profound advice.” This is something new about Tommy’s past, not something we’ve seen in the flashbacks.
Also coming up in Episode 6 is a nice scene between Buck and Eddie, who is really going through it this season with his son Christopher (Gavin McHugh) in Texas. (We see him at home alone at the end of Episode 5.) But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Buck and Eddie’s conversations are focused on that.
“I think that kind of moves along a little bit in Episode 6. Eddie has some really beautiful story in Episode 6, and I think there’s a really nice scene between the two of us, myself and Ryan, at the end of 6, that speaks volumes to what the relationship between them is and how even when they don’t have to say too much to each other, they know how to be there for each other,” Stark previews.
Looking ahead past that, 9-1-1 is returning to the world of Hotshots, the firefighter show that Bobby was stuck working on as a tech advisor before he finally returned to the 118 where he belongs. (Brian Thompson’s Gerrard took over that job on the set.) “Everybody’s having a really good time with [that world],” says Stark. “Then I think in classic 9-1-1, it’s going to go from fun episodes to some possibly really dark episodes.”
Watch the full video interview above for more from Stark, including about what’s coming up and Buck’s Halloween costume.
9-1-1, Thursdays, 8/7c, ABC