The 9-1-1 writers weren’t kidding around when they titled this week’s episode “Ghost of a Second Chance.”
While Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) faced her own past trauma in the dispatch center, Thursday’s episode also saw Eddie (Ryan Guzman) feeling like he saw a ghost — specifically the ghost of his wife Shannon (Devin Kelley).
Shannon had re-entered Eddie’s life after years apart when she died from injuries sustained in a car accident in the penultimate episode of season 2. Kelley reprised her role in the season 7 premiere earlier this year, appearing to viewers as the couple’s son, Christopher (Gavin McHugh), reads a letter his mom wrote him years earlier.
Disney/Chris Willard
Kelley returns in season 7, episode 7, both as Shannon in flashbacks and as a new character: Kim, a woman who works at a store Eddie passes and then revisits. The episode ends with Eddie dropping Christopher off at Buck’s (Oliver Stark) before heading out on what he says is a date with his girlfriend Marisol (Edy Ganem), but is actually dinner with Kim.
Ahead of this season, showrunner Tim Minear promised some familiar faces — but this seems like one return no one could have predicted. So what in Passions does this all mean?!
To get answers, Entertainment Weekly spoke with Kelley and Minear about Shannon, Kim, and what fans can expect as this new storyline plays out. (As well as a little about Malcom-Jamal Warner’s nurse Amir, who has a tragic tie to Peter Krause’s Bobby.)
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So how long ago was this return planned?
TIM MINEAR: At the beginning of the season, I was kind of toying with an idea of doing kind of a Vertigo thing with Eddie. And so, I definitely wanted to see Shannon on screen in that first episode, [which] was to just get her physically in the water — in case I wanted to revisit this Vertigo idea — so that she had a physical presence in the season early on. So it was something I’d been thinking about for a while. I wanted to give Eddie a story that was his, and I didn’t want it to be something that I was kind of willing out of the ground, that wasn’t built on the seasons that came before. I wanted to revisit [a] primal wound for him, and we’re going to see more deeply into that wound than we have before.
DEVIN KELLEY: When I was asked to come back and do the letter scene, my agent had said, “They want you back for [the season 7 premiere], maybe more. And then once I saw what the scene was, I was like, ‘Well, I don’t know how I could do more. Come back and read the grocery list or Shannon’s will, what else is there for me to do? And then lo and behold, they booked me for this episode and I just assumed it was another Shannon flashback. And then I got a call from wardrobe. I get all the fun facts and all the info from wardrobe. They know everything first. And she was like, “Okay, well you’re this woman named Kim…” And I was like, wait, what? And so she spilled the beans.
How did you decide to tackle playing Kim, Devin?
Once we found the look of her, with the swooped hair and the outfits that she wears, I let the clothes do a lot of the work. She’s very fancy and very put together. And I was kind of thinking, “Maybe I’ll be the evil twin. There will be something kind of darker and sinister about her.” But then once Ryan and I started doing the scenes, I was like, “No, it’s the opposite. Kim is light, she is free, and she’s not encumbered the way that Shannon was with postpartum and these choices in this life that were really challenging.” Oliver Stark [‘s Buck] and Kim have a scene at one point, and [Oliver] was like, “Oh, you’re not like Shannon!” Kim is very bubbly. And so it was fun to play someone who isn’t tethered to a lot of drama…. But then she becomes tethered to it by virtue of getting to know Eddie. We’re not just going to have a smooth sail. You’ve seen the cruise ship episodes, come on.
What made this Vertigo story so appealing to you, Tim?
MINEAR: Eddie has always been dealing with the loss of Shannon — with his idealized version of what that marriage could have been, but never was. I do think he has a romanticized, idealized version of what their future could have been together. And in fact, what their past was together, which you will discover a little bit more in the next episode.
KELLEY: It’s been fun to play both sides. I get to cover it all. And the big difference for me is letting the future, a.k.a. Kim, be light and optimistic, while also being Shannon. Hopefully there is catharsis and there is healing that can come for Eddie by exploring the past with Shannon and then seeing the future with Kim, who is very representative of Shannon.
MINEAR: This was an interesting way to have Eddie reengage with what was one of the more interesting relationships, to my mind, which was Shannon. But a lot of it’s just happening in his head. And again, I kind of use the Vertigo reference. I mean, it’s dangerous when you silo yourself off into your fantasy world. You might be hurting people inadvertently, and it starts to become kind of obsession. I also think it kind of dovetails into what Bobby’s going through at the same time. It’s basically ghosts from both of their pasts have risen up, but in different ways.
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Speaking of, tell us about Malcom-Jamal Warner as Amir?
MINEAR: Well, from the beginning of the season, again, in the cruise ship disaster, when Bobby thought that he was going to not be able to save Athena, he sort of went back to his primal work, which losing his first family and being the cause of it and not being able to save them. It’s really a story of does Bobby deserve this second chance? Does he deserve this new life? Does he deserve this new family? And the one thing we had never really touched on before was…. He had his book with his 148 slots of the people who died in that fire, and he was going to try to save a life for each one of those people. But what he’d never considered is that for every one of those 148 people, there are other people affected. There’s a whole ripple effect of tragedy because of one thing. And so that was really what I wanted to explore with having Bobby have to kind of face that it’s not just the people that died, it’s the people left behind — and he’s one of them.
What can you tease for Amir’s interaction with Bobby?
MINEAR: Malcolm’s going to have a pivotal role in the final three episodes, and you can probably take your cue from the title of the next episode, which is called “Step Nine.” And step nine in Alcoholics Anonymous is to make amends to those that you have harmed. So it’s really a story of Bobby having to take that step. And it’s not just one step. He’s going to have to go kind of a distance in order to try to fulfill that.
9-1-1 airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.
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