How ‘9-1-1: Lone Star’ Explained Grace’s Absence in Season 5 Premiere

This article contains spoilers for the Sept. 23 episode of “9-1-1: Lone Star”

“9-1-1: Lone Star” returned to Fox Monday night with a massive train

derailment and a major cast change: As previously announced, Grace Ryder, played by original cast member Sierra McClain, is no longer part of the show. In the Season 5 premiere, her husband Judd Ryder (Jim Parrack) explained why she’s not in Austin with him and their daughter Charlie: The always devout Grace is volunteering for a Christian charity abroad. Executive producer Rashad Raisani told TheWrap that, if the show had earned a sixth season, he would have loved to see her come back. “I want to make a point to say, I love Sierra McClain. I think she’s essential to the DNA of the show and there is no replacing her, period,” he said of writing around her character’s absence. “We found ourselves in this situation where she was just not available to us.

So we just said, ‘OK, well, the show must go on. So how do we take this crisis of logistics behind the camera and make it a crisis of story?” Raisani explained. He added, “You’ll see as the season goes on, her absence, especially in Judd’s life, looms larger and larger and leads to its own crisis. It gives Jim Parrack many more nuances that really start to emerge towards the middle and back half of the season.” As we learn in the premiere, Carlos Reyes (Rafael Silva) is now a Texas Ranger, like his late father Gabriel. Said Raisani of the storyline for the former cop, who’s still investigating his dad’s murder: “That’s going to become a really large part of our narrative in Season 5.” He told viewers to expect “some kick ass-crazy episodes where, I think people are not going to believe that certain episodes aren’t the season finale.”

The train crash — which involves a life-threatening toxic chemical cloud — continues to play out over the next two episodes. “Episode 2 is a big action movie and [the next one] starts to feel like a horror movie,” he said, citing classics like “The Fog” and “Halloween” as inspiration for the third installment. “In Episode 2, it’s our first responders doing their thing. In Episode 3, they’re the ones in trouble. The monster is chasing them. They’re all at the scene, and there’s going to be a big, giant poison cloud of death chasing after them,” Raisani said of the “intense” three-episode arc that might be the biggest set piece the show has ever done. Raisini, who spoke with TheWrap before the show’s cancellation was announced, said, “We really went for broke. We weren’t holding back any punches.”