Season 9 hot take/season 10 spec
My not-so-hot take: that finale was kind of meh, and it’s obvious some things got cut for time. Which sucks, especially with Buck and Theo. I actually like the idea of it, but there needed to be more explanation for how they got there emotionally and legally, given Buck has gone through it recently. Hopefully S10 fills in some of those gaps.
Now for the actual hot take:
I don’t think Eddie getting stabbed was pointless. And honestly? Buck not immediately running to him when the elevator opened actually made sense to me.
I think Eddie’s stabbing is part of a much larger pattern in his story: a growing crisis of faith.
Eddie has always been someone who clings tightly to faith, hope, duty, and “chain of command,” even beneath all the stoicism and skepticism. But over and over again, whenever Eddie tries to do the “right” thing, it’s immediately followed by tragedy. At a certain point, that starts to feel less like coincidence and more like something that fundamentally shakes your belief that doing good actually matters.
We’ve seen this pattern repeatedly:
- Shannon comes back and Eddie thinks he might get a second chance at a family, only for her to ask for a divorce, reveal she isn’t pregnant, and then die.
- Eddie tries to help his friend out of his depression by giving him Chris for the day. Then Christopher and Buck survive the tsunami, then the lawsuit after isolates them from each other.
- Eddie helps protect that kid during the sniper arc and gets shot.
- Eddie tries to take care of his mental health, then he realizes he never actually saved anyone in the desert.
- He starts rebuilding things with Christopher and then loses Bobby.
- Eddie reconnects with Abuela and his faith, then loses her too.
- He helps Abigail escape abuse done “in the name of God”, only for her parents to be released.
- He reconnects with Buck during the Nashville trip and it ends in a fight, a crash, and Buck getting kidnapped.
- He tries to help Buck afterward, but misses Buck spiraling into opioid dependency.
- He rescues trafficking victims, only for ICE to take them anyway, leading to Athena getting shot.
- Theo loses his parents in a way that mirrors Shannon, leaving Buck and Eddie caught in another painful cycle of grief and responsibility.
- Eddie literally prays and reaches toward a higher power again after hearing she survived, and then immediately gets stabbed.
The point isn’t that Eddie is being “punished.” It’s that his goodness is constantly juxtaposed with suffering. Every time he tries to trust the system, trust God, trust duty, trust the rules... things still fall apart. And Eddie is stubborn enough that it’s taken YEARS for those cracks to show, but I think we’re finally seeing them stack too high to ignore.
And I think Buck’s reaction ties into that contrast really well.
Old Buck would’ve immediately rushed in emotionally, consequences be damned. But Buck has changed a lot. He’s calmer now, more restrained, more willing to let other people take control when they’re better equipped. Him not charging into the elevator doesn’t read to me like indifference, it reads like growth. He trusts the people around him to handle the emergency instead of acting purely on instinct.
Which is why I think there’s potential for a really interesting reversal next season if the writers commit to it:
Buck becoming more grounded, measured, and willing to follow chain of command… while Eddie starts losing faith in the very systems and beliefs he’s spent years relying on. Because from Eddie’s perspective, following the rules and doing everything “right” has never actually protected the people he loves.
I think we are sort of already starting to see Eddie flip and be the more sort of "impulsive" one with him jumping off the bridge, him breaking out of the hospital to save Buck, and in the immigrant story line, Eddie was the one leading the crew to breaking into the building. This flip could be so interesting, because they still balance each other out in many ways, but their roles are switched.