Heartbreak
‘9-1-1’: How Will Athena Handle That Tragic Loss?
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for 9-1-1 Season 8 Episode 15 “Lab Rats.”]
Athena (Angela Bassett) has lost another loved one. This time, her husband Captain Bobby Nash (Peter Krause), in a shocking twist at the end of the latest 9-1-1 episode.
Early on in the episode, Bobby knew he was going to die, which means he knew throughout all his conversations with Athena over the phone; he realized that his oxygen line was torn in the explosion in the previous episode — so he was exposed to a super strain of CCHF (Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever) — and kept quiet while his wife tracked down the anti-viral that Chimney (Kenneth Choi) needed. When he revealed he was infected and locked himself in the lab after the others were evacuated, he told Athena that he started feeling it hours ago.
“I’m sorry, this isn’t how I wanted to leave you,” he told her. “I’m not choosing to leave you. I chose to save my team because it was the right thing to do. It was never because I wanted to go. I don’t want to go. If I could choose, I would stay with you always.” As he saw it, he was living on borrowed time because Los Angeles “was supposed to be my penance, not my home. Then you said yes to a dinner invitation, and I started to live again.” After coughing up blood, Bobby told Athena he loved her. He wanted her to go, rather than see him like this, but she refused: “I’m here for all the parts that we have left.” And so, after touching their hands to the glass — yes, you know how that goes in situations like this — she watched him die.
Showrunner Tim Minear told TV Insider that it was important that there be a scene between the two. “I didn’t want him to get hit by a bus or have a thing dropped on his head or he expires in a coma or something. It needed to be face-to-face,” he explained.
Going forward, like with all the characters, Athena won’t be handling her grief well. “You’re going to see Athena try to achieve a miracle that she didn’t get with Bobby,” he teased.
When Chimney thought he was going to die, he made Bobby promise to look after Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and his family. However, don’t expect to see the same now that it was the other man who died. “He can’t really do the same for Bobby because I’m not sure Athena’s going to be open to a lot of comfort from the man who’s alive because — not that she blames Chimney, but that’s going to figure in a lot to the last three episodes,” warned Minear.
We know that we will see Krause as Bobby again, possibly in dreams, flashbacks, or hallucinations. (The first two are prime candidates for Athena, in our opinion.) How are you hoping to see Bobby and Athena share the screen again? Let us know in the comments section below.
9-1-1, Thursdays, 8/7c, ABC
