Wait, is the 118 about to say goodbye to one of its own?!

9-1-1 ends its fall finale—with the return not until March!—with Eddie

(Ryan Guzman) revealing to Buck (Oliver Stark) his plan to move to

Texas to be with his son. Christopher (Gavin McHugh) is now living with his grandparents after catching his father with the doppelganger of his dead mother. We’ll have to wait to see if Eddie’s actually moving to Texas (so far he’s just looking at houses), and when TV Insider turned to showrunner Tim Minear for answers about that, he wouldn’t say—March can’t come soon enough for answers!—but he did tease what’s ahead.

Eddie possibly moving back to Texas—when did you realize this arc for him was leading to that?

Tim Minear: I’ve known it since the beginning of the season.

Why did you want to take him on that path?

I think what he sees is that Christopher is thriving in Texas and even when you see this Zoom call in this episode, he seems so much older. He just seems like, wow, he’s really turning into a person. And I think Eddie responds to that and sees that the gap is in fact getting deeper between them. Just as Brad [Calllum Blue] warns him later in the episode, don’t let that gap grow wider and he sees his kid’s thriving. So it just feels like Eddie needs to be the one to take a step. Eddie needs to be the one to give up something, to walk away from something in order to really focus on repairing that relationship with Chris.

Buck was outwardly supportive, but it’s clear that he’s not 100 percent on board with Eddie moving. How is he really feeling about that and how might he be doing with his best friend debating moving to Texas?

I think Buck feels completely torn. He wants to support Eddie. He understands how important that relationship with Christopher is. I mean, his relationship with Christopher is important, too, so he wants to be as supportive of that as possible and it will drive him completely insane.

Is everyone going to be getting baked goods?

He’s not going to open a Mrs. Fields or something, but I think that he will find maybe something else to try to keep him from completely spinning out of control. He will be pouring all of his abandonment issues and anxiety into something else.

This also comes as Buck is still struggling with the breakup, so how is he going to be doing there going forward?

Well, I think that this is going to overshadow it in some ways, but it’s all part of a piece, right? Poor Buck has got his abandonment issues going way, way back, and I think by the end of Episode 9, those abandonment issues are going to deepen further.