Oliver Stark, Ryan Guzman, and Aisha Hinds star in ABC’s 9-1-1, which will return for its tenth season this fall. While covering the Disney 2026 Upfront Red Carpet, I caught up with the actors about the procedural drama and which season 9 moments they were most impressed by each other’s performances.

The series explores the high-pressure experiences of first responders — including police officers, firefighters, and dispatchers — who are thrust into the most frightening, shocking, and heart-stopping conditions. These emergency responders must try to balance saving those who are at their most vulnerable with solving the problems in their own lives. The show draws from the real lives of first responders who regularly face situations that are often unpredictable, intense, and uplifting at the same time.

“Hen had a really rough time coming back together, and the thing that brought her back was community and all of her comrades basically helping her to find her way and helping her to recover,” Hinds shared of her character. “In that [finale] scenario, it was like, she’s not gonna not be included in this recovery effort, you know, not gonna not be present for Athena. And so, she’s gonna push through and do whatever she has to do to make sure that she’s a part of that.”

Meanwhile, Buck will be stepping up to foster Theo, which will be a main storyline in the upcoming season.

“I think it’s gonna be interesting and important to see how he doesn’t try and enforce himself too much on this child that’s come into his life. Obviously, he’s had four years of growing up with parents and whatever parenting style they had. So, Buck is gonna have to move slowly with it and not try and enforce anything too strictly at the beginning,” Stark explained. “He has other parents in his life who we’ve learned over the years are fantastic parents, so he would be silly not to lean upon them.”

There was already a big parallel for Buck and Eddie with Kameron and Connor’s death on the bridge in 9×17, mirroring aspects of Shannon’s death in season 2.

With that in mind, fans have expressed their desire for an opening emergency parallel with Eddie and Theo, inspired by the season 3 tsunami with Buck and Christopher.

“Wow. I would love that, actually,” Guzman told me. “I mean, is there an LA flood of some sort, like a dam breaks or something? I don’t know how we get there, but, yeah, I think me and Theo could have a good time, me chasing a little kid around. I don’t know, we’ll see.”

Watch my full interview below:

All episodes of 9-1-1 are streaming on Hulu.