SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “Both Sides, Now,“ the premiere of the 5th season of Fox’s “9-1-1: Lone Star.”

As we continue, we remember all the good times we had with the 126 — and they’re not over yet. While Fox has confirmed that 9-1-1: Lone Star will end with season five, the end is still a while away — the 9-1-1 spinoff just premiered its final season on Monday after being off the air for more than a year.

In the episode titled “Both Sides, Now,” the 126 begins with a standoff over a hijacked armored car before moving on to a massive emergency involving a derailed train over the course of three episodes. Meanwhile, newly minted Texas Ranger Carlos (Rafael Silva) is learning the ropes and balancing his married life with TK (Ronen Rubinstein). The young couple have been married for nearly a year following a time jump since their wedding in the season four finale. He’s also spent all that time solving his father’s murder.

Owen (Rob Lowe) turns to Tommy (Gina Torres) to help him cope with the death of his brother Robert, while also finding a replacement for Judd (Jim Parrack), who left 126 during the time jump, and both Marjan (Natacha Karam) and Paul (Brian Michael Smith) are vying for the open lieutenant position. After 9-1-1: Lone Star actress Sierra McClain’s exit before the final season, her character, Judd’s wife Grace, was written off as a missionary and Judd’s son Wyatt (Jackson Pace) has taken over Grace’s role as the show’s call center host.

Co-showrunner Rashad Raisani is here to analyze the premiere and plans for the rest of the fifth and final season of “9-1-1: Lone Star” — including an “apocalyptic” series finale.

How did the time jump in the last season come about? Did the wait for the return of “Lone Star” have an impact on it, since season 4 ended in May 2023?

That was actually the main factor. In real life, a year had passed and we just thought it would be weird to pretend that this period of time in people’s lives never happened. I think the other factor that came into play was we thought it was a great opportunity to move people’s lives forward in a big way, so we could surprise people with fresh, big surprises. You kind of catch them up. And some of the joys of the first episode are, “Oh, wait, what’s Carlos doing lately? And has Owen gotten over all the things that happened a long time ago? And where is Judd in his life? And Wyatt has been able to rehab his injury as much as he’s able to?”

To be honest, when we sensed that this might be the last season, it put us in a position where we could really put everyone on the runway to get them where we wanted them to be to potentially end the series.

I was disappointed that we missed the newlywed Tarlos because of this. How much will you still see from the early days of your marriage?

I like to think that the joy that Carlos and TK will have will come from an even deeper place now, because their world has seen some pain—Carlos’ father was murdered—and that puts a strain on their relationship as well. As much as I want them to always feel like they have an easy, carefree, problem-free life, which they absolutely deserve, but in the real world, life doesn’t work that way. Even when you’re in an incredibly loving, committed relationship, life still finds ways to kick you in the gut, and sometimes that can affect the relationship. But what I think makes their relationship so beautiful is that it always comes out stronger from those challenges and those pressures. And I hope that the joy you feel in seeing these guys get through some of the things they’re going to go through as a couple will come across on an even more beautiful level than seeing them completely relaxed and able to just enjoy each other’s company without really having to try hard in the real world.

Carlos plays a major role in the premiere after being promoted to Texas Ranger, and the episode ends with the revelation that he’s been heavily investigating his father’s murder in his spare time. What plans do you have for him this season outside of his relationship with TK?

With Carlos, this obsession has been brewing for a year and hasn’t gone away at all. If anything, it continues to metastasize, what he’s dealing with. And Carlos can’t just pick up his investigation every week and move forward, because that’s not how real cases work. So he just has to ride it out until some things open up to him, which we’ll get to. But this obsession never goes away, and it’s there in every single scene that he’s in. This is the season where you see the man Carlos is going to become. I hope it’s not the last time, but as we say goodbye to him and TK and all these characters that I love, you see what this man is going to become when the sun goes down on this show. Having to find his father’s killer – having him become his own man as a Texas Ranger and as a husband – that was all part of the recipe of what we wanted to do with him.

How early in the writing and filming did you know that this would be the last season?

Even before the strikes, it was clear that 9-1-1: Lone Star was not going to work because the 9-1-1/Lone Star studio, 20th Television, was bought by Disney and the 9-1-1 contract cycle ended in a way that allowed 9-1-1 to move more seamlessly to ABC, and our contract didn’t fit as well. So we knew it was going to be difficult to ever get through this. I’m not a contract lawyer, so I can’t give all the details of why it would be difficult, and only How difficult, but it was pretty clear that it was going to be difficult for the show to get past Season 5, if only because of the sheer numbers that these two companies were dealing with.

But I never gave up hope that there was still a spark that would make it work. So we knew that was going to be our reality going forward. It was getting better, but I always felt like I wanted to end this show in a way that gave a nice sense of journey and closure for these characters — but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it couldn’t be revived if by some chance that was possible. But I wanted to, just in case, and assuming it would be our last, I really wanted to give us that final episode so that people could feel like, “OK, I’ve gotten to know these people and I feel like I’m leaving them in a better place where I saw them grow up.”

Sierra McClain left the show before season 5 and you had to find a way to write off her character Grace. Why did Sierra leave? And how did you come up with the idea of ​​writing off Grace, who left behind her job as a call center agent, her husband Judd and their young daughter?

I chose to let Sierra tell her side of the story, but I can only tell you my side of my experience, which is that Sierra is the soul of Lone Star and she’s so central to what the show is about that I never wanted to think about doing the show without her. And for a moment, it looked like it might work – and even two or three weeks before production, we thought there was a chance, but then it just wasn’t in the cards. So we had to pivot, and that was very difficult. I felt it was critical to protect both the character Grace and the actress Sierra McClain – I adore both of them. The challenge was how to explain her absence without just killing her off senselessly, which I think would have just been a farce, or doing something like: she left Judd, divorced him, or something so repulsive – which I don’t think anyone would believe. So that was our challenge, to explain it away, or at least explain it in a way that allowed us to continue the show. And I’ll leave it to the audience to decide whether we did that – I think we did. We made the loss of our show Judd’s story as well and I think that ultimately led to a very beautiful story arc that takes us through our entire fifth season, especially for Judd. I like to think that we were able to find at least a little silver lining in this great loss.

Any chance we’ll have a moment where we relive the finale? It’s going to be really hard to see Judd’s story end without Grace.

I agree. Unfortunately, we’ve already filmed it. I was hoping until the last minute, I’ll say that. I really don’t think it’s satisfying not to see her on screen. But other than that, I’m just incredibly proud of where the show is going. I just think the show ends on such a profound note that people will think, wow, it couldn’t have ended any other way.

What can you tell us about the rest of the final season and how did you decide to end the series?

Just to announce the season: Of course, we have this big train derailment and the gas leak. But we’re also going to have a lot of fun this year. For me, the fun of this show was watching this helpless Rob Lowe, who was originally born in Santa Monica and raised in New York, just worldly and has skincare products and haircare products and all that kind of stuff. And I thought it would be really fun to see him play a little bit more cowboy this season. So we have some emergencies that reflect that, more of the Wild West, we do crazy stuff with horses. Then we’re going to see some crazy Texas Rangers cases that are just more grim and horrific than anything we’ve done in years. And as far as the end of the show and the emergency at the end, I would say it’s apocalyptic in every sense of the word. I think people will actually say, “Oh my God, I can’t believe they went so apocalyptic at the end!” We wanted to reflect the feeling we had when we wrote the last episode when we watched it, so that it’s the end of the world not just for our characters and for us – the people who worked on the show that we were so proud of – but potentially for everyone watching it.

So the finale will be “The Last of Us”?

Let’s just say we’re doing “The Last of Us” with a bit of “Chernobyl.”

This interview has been edited and shortened.