9-1-1: Lone Star – What happened to T.K. and Carlos? Also, #SavePaul!
9-1-1: Lone Star returned to the small screen last week with quite a bang. Q+ Magazine tuned in to check out what our favorite neighborhood queers had been up to in their break, and my goodness, nothing could have prepared us for the mess we walked into.
Our stupidly in-love T.K. (Ronan Rubenstein) and Carlos (Rafael. L Silva) are definitely not in the same place that we left them in at the end of season 2. It’s an absolute travesty that had us screaming at the television, demanding answers!
As for 3×01, we had no more answers than when the episode started, so we decided to wait for 3×02. Surely, more information would be given to viewers about their situation then, right? WRONG! 9-1-1: Lone Star, we have many questions! Here is everything we think about the first two episodes of season 3.
Season 3×01 “The Big Chill” episode recap
Season 3 kicks off with the 126 in complete dissolution. The team has been disbanded and Captain Strand (Rob Lowe) is living a life of leisure in a Texas cabin with Buttercup (the dog). Marjan (Natacha Karam) is determined not to let the station house be demolished, or her team for that matter, and continues the fight to get them reunited.
Everyone has been reassigned and is going about their new reality with their new teams. Some of the members of the 126 were kept together and some were not.
This week’s disaster? Austin, Texas is experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime blizzard, which brings many disasters to the city’s first responders. Despite being separated into different units, many of the 126 find themselves reunited during the episode to deal with the disasters at hand. Many, but not everyone.
Marjan finishes out the episode stranded in her car after an accident. Captain Strand is not with any of his former teammates but does find himself in need when he discovers a man down during a walk with Buttercup, and the rest? Well, they all have their hands incredibly busy. It seems that not everyone makes it out of this episode in one piece.
Season 3×02 “Thin Ice” episode recap
Episode 3×02 picks up right where episode 1 left off: in the middle of the rare Texas snowstorm. T.K. ends up walking out into the middle of a frozen pond that has trapped a child underneath the surface. The first responders think the child is alive so the clock is on to get him out.
While he is trying to get the child out, T.K. falls into the freezing water himself – because of course he does – and it isn’t long before he is entering a state of hypothermia. He sheds his clothes and ends up butt naked in the snow, gibbering a language he doesn’t really speak, as his coworkers try and save him.
After running her car off the road in episode 1, Marjan spends almost the entirety of this episode passed out at the wheel. She comes into consciousness right at the end. Meanwhile, Captain Strand ends up on a wild goose chase in the snow looking for an injured community member. He takes a nasty fall in the middle of nowhere, with no one around to find him.
The kicker of the night, however, is when Paul (Brian Michael Smith) – mid-rescue – loses consciousness. It looks bad for Paul; really bad. We don’t know about you, but we were definitely screaming #SavePaul at the screen for the entire scene.
Carlos shows up at the hospital in the last couple of minutes of the episode, which quite frankly, had us both exhaling hallelujah and screaming obscenities at the same time. With both Paul and TK in critical condition, one can’t help but ask the million-dollar question: what the hell is 9-1-1: Lone Star doing to the queers!?
T.K. and Carlos
Season 2 ended with T.K. and Carlos in a very good place in their relationship. When the season closed out, many folks in the fandom were actually speculating whether or not there would be a 9-1-1: Lone Star wedding between these two in the third season. Not a single person expected the new season to kick off with the couple being very broken up, and not even speaking to each other.
When the first episode starts, viewers are not privy to a breakup scene. Whatever went down between the two guys happened in the off-season and fans have not yet been given an explanation as to why they’re no longer together. In fact, almost no screen time has been given to the issue at all.
In the first episode, T.K. makes a comment that it just wasn’t meant to be, and then viewers aren’t really given any more information about what might have led to the breakup until the very end of the second episode. When Carlos shows up at the hospital, he does so under the guise that it was T.K. who asked him there, instead of someone else. Carlos comments that T.K. hasn’t wanted to speak to Carlos in months, alluding to the fact that perhaps it was T.K. who broke off the relationship.
No further information is given, except that T.K. is in critical condition and could possibly die. Stan Twitter has been flooded with questions and theories as to what happened and why the writers of the show would even contemplate doing something like this to the beloved couple.
Fans love this show so much because it hasn’t bought into any of the negative stereotypical storylines that gays are afforded in mainstream television shows. There are a lot of people questioning whether 9-1-1: Lone Star will keep its integrity over their handling of this issue. Please don’t let us down!
What do you think happened between T.K. and Carlos, and was it really necessary to enforce a breakup in order to deal with it? We get it. Drama, drama, yada, yada – but sheesh. We’ll be watching closely to see how this plays out.
#SavePaul
Paul Strickland is an out trans man on the show, played by an out trans man in real life. He is a show favorite and is one of the reasons so many fans tune in week after week. Such positive trans representation is incredibly rare on primetime television. So, as episode 2 comes to an end and Paul is in the hospital fighting for his life, we can’t help but ask 9-1-1: Lone Star why are you coming for the rainbow characters?
With two of the three queer characters on the show laying wrecked in the hospital and the other acting like a clueless fool, people are waiting with bated breath to see if the show is going to do the community dirty and bury the gays (we all know how much Hollywood just loves to play that game).
It seems like an awfully ballsy move in the current climate to go after the out-trans character on the show. As the show was airing on Monday night, the hashtag #SavePaul flooded the Twitterverse for hours as folks screamed into the void about their beloved character. We’re begging you 9-1-1: Lone Star, please save our man! (No, really!)
The next episode is scheduled to air on January 24, 2022. We will definitely be tuning in to see how Fox handles all these very precarious and tragic situations our rainbow community members have found themselves in! 9-1-1: Lone Star airs on Fox on Monday nights. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram for all queer stuff!
Featured Image: Courtesy of Fox
