9 Most Preposterous ‘9-1-1’ Plot Points — They’re Going to Space Now?!

Key art posters from '9-1-1'
ABC

9-1-1’s far-fetched plots are reaching new heights — literally. In Season 9, Athena (Angela Bassett) and Hen (Aisha Hinds) will go from first responders to some of the first civilians in space. And as you’ll see below, their safe return to Earth is all but guaranteed. (How can the writers top this calamity next season? An interdimensional wormhole opens in Los Angeles?)

Ahead of Thursday’s out-of-this-world season premiere, we’re detailing that plot point and others so ridiculous we wondered if Ryan Murphy & Co. were trolling us.

9. A Harmful Handful

In Season 7’s “You Don’t Know Me,” a self-help speaker suffers a case of alien hand syndrome, which the Cleveland Clinic defines as a condition that causes hands to move or perform actions involuntarily. But the clinic says nothing about one’s hands inflicting violence to one’s self or others — including Eddie’s (Ryan Guzman) groin.

8. Lighting Strikes (Twice)

A day at the beach is anything but relaxing for the poor sap in Season 6’s “In a Flash.” After this man’s kids bury him in sand, the skies turn overcast for all of two seconds, and a lightning bolt strikes a nearby beach umbrella. The electricity turns the sand into glass, and one jagged piece goes straight into the father’s carotid artery. And don’t even get us started on Buck (Oliver Stark) getting hit by a second bolt and gaining savant-level math skills.

7. Blue Christmas

In Season 3’s “Christmas Spirit,” a woman wakes up to discover her skin has turned a royally disturbing royal blue. The 118 team realizes the woman overdosed on benzocaine and developed methemoglobinemia. That condition does give people’s skin a certain blue tinge, but not a Mystique-from-X-Men skin tone.

6. Parachute Meets Getaway Driver

A man jumps off a skyscraper to parachute into a marriage proposal in Season 6’s “Love Is in the Air,” but he doesn’t get a chance to pop the question before his parachute gets caught in the wheels of a speeding truck driven by a bank robber. (And we don’t know what’s cheesier: the CGI as he’s yanked away or the shot of every background actor pointing at the sky.)

5. Highway Shark Attack

The tiger shark in Season 2’s “New Beginnings” apparently never heard the adage “Don’t bite the hand that tries to release you into the wild.” After a truck transporting the shark jackknifed on the highway, the shark took a chomp out of one of the workers trying to save it. Not quite Sharknado-level implausible, but certainly dubious.

4. An Un-bee-lievable Twist

Athena just cannot catch a break. Just a season after surviving the cruise ship disaster — more on that below — she’s transporting a prisoner on a passenger jetliner in Season 7’s “Buzzkill,” and that plane collides with one whose pilot was flying blind because of a swarm of bees.

3. Bobby & Plane, Nose to Nose

Athena’s nearly-doomed flight comes to an end in Season 8’s “Final Approach” when she lands the plane on a freeway the 118 cleared, with the help of a young boy on board who happens to be an aviation enthusiast. And of course — of course — the plane stops just feet from where Bobby (Peter Krause) is standing on top of a fire engine.

2. The Cruise From Hell

In Season 7’s three-part premiere, Bobby and Athena take the most cursed honeymoon cruise. Pirates invade the ship, looking for a dongle that’s the key to a cryptocurrency fortune. Then an explosion punches a hole in the hull. And then, as if all that weren’t enough drama, a wave from a hurricane capsizes the whole vessel, Poseidon Adventure-style.

1. 9-1-1 in Space

The Season 9 trailer shows exactly how Athena and Hen end up as astronauts. After the team rescues billionaire Trip Hauser (Mark Conseulos) from the maw of a whale, he offers Hen and a plus-one a trip into orbit. Hen recruits Athena, and the duo blasts off, even though Trip knows there’s a geomagnetic storm on the horizon. And soon, space debris is crashing to Earth, and all that’s stopping Athena from drifting off into space is Hen’s grip…

9-1-1, Season 9 premiere, Thursday, October 9, 8/7c