9-1-1: Lone Star Appears to Kill Off Major Character in Episode Ahead of Series Finale

Rob Lowe and Gina Torres as Tommy and Owen in ‘9-1-1: Lone Star’ season 5. Photo:

Kevin Estrada/FOX.

Tommy Vega received some shocking news ahead of the 9-1-1: Lone Star finale.

In the Jan. 27 episode, Tommy (Gina Torres) found out she had an inoperable tumor pressing against her aorta. Viewers last see Tommy lying on the couch, leaving it questionable at the end of the episode, which comes one week ahead of 9-1-1: Lone Star’s series finale, as to whether she survived after months of unsuccessful chemo treatments.

Torres, 55, told TVLine that Tommy will appear in the finale, but she did not confirm in what capacity.

Tommy didn’t tell her twin daughters about the diagnosis in the Jan. 27 episode, instead opting to ask them to send selfies when she chatted with them via FaceTime, but her late husband Charles (Derek Webster) showed up in an unexplained fantastical way to give her some guidance.

Torres called the reunion, which her character credits to having a stroke, with Webster, 44, “very emotional.” 

“It was hard with this fantastical situation where she isn’t sure how much of it is actually happening,” she said to TVLine. “Modulating that emotionally so that the audience buys it was the toughest part.”

Gina Torres as Tommy in ‘9-1-1: Lone Star’ season 4. Kevin Estrada/FOX

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Showrunner Rashad Raisani told Variety he always planned for Tommy to reunite with Charles, who died from an aneurysm in season 2.

“I’ve said when we did this whole journey with Tommy’s cancer and with Gina, the actor, as well is we really were going to have to go all the way,” Raisani, 45, said. “And a big part of it was also an opportunity in this episode for Tommy to have it come full circle. And to be to be frank, I took a lot of heat for ending the Trevor and Tommy relationship, but part of why we did it is because I knew this was where we wanted to take her character full circle with this love of her life.”

ina Torres and Derek Webster as Tommy and Charles in ‘9-1-1: Lone Star’ season 2. FOX via Getty

The dream-like reunion came from Raisani’s own experience with the death of his mom.

“My mom, right before she passed, I was in her hospital room, and she was telling me about how her mom and dad had come to visit her that morning. And it was so vivid for her,” he recalled. “She wasn’t saying it as if, ‘Oh, they’re ghosts.’ She was just saying it as if it happened. And then she passed not long after, and it gave her such comfort. And I think that stuck with me.”

Raisani also planned to leave that cliffhanger at the end of Lone Star’s penultimate episode. “I hope we left some questions in people’s minds that they’ll want to come back one more time and see how it ends,” he told Entertainment Weekly.

The Jan. 27 episode additionally showed the 126 crew faced with an asteroid that’s expected to hit Austin, which star Rob Lowe speculated might make his character, firefighter captain Owen Strand, part of the finale’s death toll.

“Is there a world where Owen dies heroically? Does he live, does he not? And same for everybody else,” Lowe, 60, told EW. “This is a show where it’s totally organic on any given day that any one of these characters could have something really bad happen to them. I mean, that’s not pushed reality — it’s the reality of what first responders go through. So we were debating, ‘Do we want to push that button … and for who?'”

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The 9-1-1: Lone Star finale airs Monday, Feb. 3, at 8 p.m. on Fox.

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