“9-1-1” virus cliffhanger ending explained: What happened to Bobby, Chimney, and Hen — plus a preview of part 2
If only Moira on 9-1-1 was more like Moira on Schitt’s Creek.
On Thursday’s episode of the ABC drama, a scientist named Moira — not played by Schitt’s Creek‘s Catherine O’Hara — is to blame for the danger beloved 118 firefighters Bobby (Peter Krause), Hen (Aisha Hinds), Chimney (Kenneth Choi), and Ravi (Anirudh Pisharody) find themselves in.
Newly fired from a biomedical research laboratory, scientist Moira decided to knock her colleague unconscious and take the antidote for CCHF, or Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, that she’d just created (after also developing a strain of the virus that attacks its host much quicker) and hit the road.
It’s unclear if she also set the fire that brings the 118 to the laboratory; regardless, the first responders get trapped three stories below street level after an explosion triggers emergency lockdown protocols.
Hen suffers a collapsed lung, which Chimney prepares to remedy — until his wife, 911 dispatcher Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt), reminds him that his cracked mask may have just exposed him to CCHF (which is described by the World Health Organization as a virus that causes severe viral hemorrhagic fever outbreaks with a case fatality rate up to 40 percent).
The U.S. Army had been preparing an extraction of the 118, but when they learn of Moira’s sped-up virus, they cancel all plans.
“We have a pandemic in a bottle,” the head of the operation, Col. Hartman, tells police sergeant Athena (Angela Bassett) and firefighter Buck (Oliver Stark), “and I am not risking popping that top.”
“What are they, canaries in a coal mine?” Athena asks about what’s to come of the 118, as Chimney is already coughing up blood. “They’re heroes,” Hartman replies, “and we are thankful for their sacrifice.”
As the Army prepares to evacuate an 8-mile radius around the laboratory, Buck and Athena focus on rescuing their friends/husband/brother-in-law, sending Ravi to find the cure they think Moira left behind.
Hartman threatens Bobby and Ravi with jail time if they use up the only known antidote to the new strain of the virus, but neither listens, with Bobby offering to do the deed, but Ravi stepping up before his captain can take his place.
Unfortunately, Moira has taken the antidote with her, leaving Chimney’s symptoms progressing and the other four 118 members left for dead.
What happens next was previewed in a clip (above) airing after Thursday’s episode: Chimney only gets worse as Athena attempts to enter the laboratory to deliver the antiviral (which we can assume they tracked down from that pesky Moira).
That said, the preview also shows Buck and Hen both screaming like someone died — so does someone?
