‘9-1-1’ Promo: Eddie Interrupts Buck’s Date With Tommy (Video)

This arc will continue for some time, Stark told TV Insider. “It’s going to be a thread of working out how to proceed and what this means for him and that may or could turn out to be that it doesn’t actually mean that much for him, that it’s not a big change, that it doesn’t need to be a big life switch for him,” he said. “And I think there’s actually something more loving and accepting about that, that he’s still Buck, he’s just found this thing that he’s also okay with and is going to make him feel good and that that’s okay.”

Episode 4 ended without Buck and Eddie talking after the former accidentally injured his best friend on the basketball court, but both Stark and showrunner Tim Minear told us that conversation is coming in Episode 5.

“It’s what you would expect. Buck and Eddie are best friends and because they’re best friends and because he has very deep feelings for his best friend, keeping something from him is painful, but it’s scary to completely turn over every card when you don’t even know what those cards are yourself,” Minear previewed. “So I think we give it the screen time it needs in the next episode. The next episode really is about Buck feeling like he’s lying to his best friend and he can’t live with that.”

While it seemed like Buck was jealous in Episode 4, Stark isn’t so sure that needs to be addressed going forward. “They’ll have some really in-depth conversations, but I don’t think that jealousy as such is something that even needs to be addressed because I don’t think jealousy is even necessarily the right word for what he experienced in this episode,” he explained. “I don’t think he was aware of what he was feeling. If it was jealousy, I don’t know if he knew who he was jealous of. He just knew that something was off and that he had feelings that were new to him, but I don’t think he was quite able to comprehend what exactly they were. And so I think they manifested themselves maybe as jealousy, but that’s not necessarily what the root cause of it was.”

9-1-1, Thursdays, 8/7c, ABC