'The writing was on the wall': 9-1-1: Lone Star EP gets honest about Fox cancellation

The fifth and final season of 9-1-1: Lone Star debuted on Fox in the TV schedule 2024 after a jump in time of one year, the departure of a starand a major crisis en route with a train derailment. Unlike when 9-1-1 was canceled, then immediately taken over by ABC to change networks, no such rescue appears to be in store for the Texas spinoff. CinemaBlend spoke with Lone Star co-showrunner and executive producer Rashad Raisani about the upcoming ending, and he was candid about the cancellation news.

While season 5 will have time to contain some Adversity for Tarlosonly twelve episodes in total were produced for 9-1-1: Lone StarIt’s swan song season. After admitting that the the storyline of Grace leaving Judd was “hard to buy”, Raisani had this to say when I asked where the team was in the season when they learned the end was near:

To be honest, we didn’t. I should say it wasn’t official until I saw a trailer a few weeks ago on Fox. It said “the final season”. That’s when it became official for me. This was after I finished. This is the official side. As far as the writing on the wall goes, the writing was on the wall even before the strikes, because as we were wrapping up Season 4, we knew we were entering our final season of this deal between Disney and Fox.

Obviously, the season 5 finale was not intended as the series finale since the series ended before the cancellation was officially announced. That said, Lone StarThe impending end didn’t come out of nowhere for the team after the WGA Writers Strike and the SAG-AFTRA cast strike at the end of 2023. The executive producer continued:

We knew that the chances of a series like ours, which has a fairly large budget – especially in today’s environment, because we have big action, we have a big cast – we knew that it was going to be a challenge, and can -be an insurmountable challenge. challenge, to revive the show. When we’re owned by Disney and we’re on Fox, from a financial, digital and purely business perspective, it didn’t make a lot of sense for those two companies to find a way to work together to keep this going. arrive.

9-1-1: Lone Star certainly has a great ensemble of characters, and Sierra McClain’s departure hasn’t really narrowed the cast. Wyatt already had a heightened presence in the Season 5 premiere (which you can stream with a Hulu Subscription), And Subburgatory‘s Parker Young joins the cast play an important character in Carlos’ story.

Also, the episodes are not turn out to be “like mini-films”, to quote Rob Lowe, without a big budget behind them, and the numbers just didn’t work out between Disney and Fox for a sixth season of Lone Star. Rashad Raisani noted that the state of the business was different when the show was in the planning stages in 2019, stating:

Whereas if we had been in the same studio network as when the series started – before the Disney merger, it was a 20th series for Fox at the time of its conception – there might have been no further way to go if we had been in this situation.

9-1-1: Lone Star finally premiered in early 2020, just a few months before the entertainment industry more or less shut down due to COVID-19. It was less than a year after the merger between Disney and 21st Century Fox has become official. It must be recognized that the series has overcome some major obstacles, notably COVID-19 and strikes.

Rashad Raisani has confirmed that he is “immensely proud” of the finished product of season 5, and all signs point to an exciting final set of episodes. Find out what awaits the characters with the final season of 9-1-1: Lone Star Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on Fox, ahead of the freshman series Rescue: HI-Surf to 9 p.m. ET. You can also revisit previous seasons of Lone Star streaming via Hulu now.