‘9-1-1’ Aftershow: Elijah M. Cooper Says ‘Bobby Is the Massive Reason’ Harry Wants to Be a Firefighter (VIDEO)

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for 9-1-1 Season 9 Episode 9 “Fighting Back.”]

Welcome to the 118, Harry (Elijah M. Cooper)! Yes, Athena’s (Angela Bassett) son and Bobby’s (Peter Krause) stepson graduates from the academy and is officially a firefighter — well, a probie firefighter — by the end of the Thursday, January 22, episode of 9-1-1.

When Harry goes to check his station assignment after graduation, the members of the 118 assure him that he’s with them — after the work they put into raising him, they weren’t letting him go anywhere else. And Harry wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else, Cooper tells TV Insider as part of our 9-1-1 aftershow, First Response. (Watch the full video interview above.)

“He’s all in, 118. It’s like this is my crew, this is my family. Of course, Bobby is the massive reason of why he’s even doing any of this. So I think in his heart of hearts, it’s like, ‘OK, well, if I end up somewhere else, it is what it is.’ But then there’s also this feeling of hope inside of him that’s like, ‘This is where I want to end up. I hope that this happens,'” Cooper says. “It was a surprise, but it was this beautiful moment where everybody’s huddled together and there’s happiness and joy and excitement for what’s ahead.”

Disney/Christopher Willard

But now he is going to be a probie with his family at the 118, which has to change up the dynamics. According to Cooper, the “biggest one” will be with Buck (Oliver Stark), whom Harry has been turning to for advice, including in this episode, after he falls off a ladder during training and ends up with a concussion, then freezes when it comes time to return and climb up again. He wants to know how not to panic, then worries he’s being selfish and risking his mother planning another funeral after Bobby. He can’t think like that, Buck tells him.

Harry keeps turning to Buck for advice because of the latter’s dynamic with Bobby, Cooper says. “This is a new version of that. He knows that Bobby, who he loved and trusted so closely, had such a big impact in Buck’s life. And now this is a person that he feels like he can step up to and be like, ‘Hey, I do need this guidance. I know you’ve done it before, too. I know you’ve experienced this. I know you’ve felt the feelings that I’ve felt before,'” he explains.

Before Harry graduates, however, he and Athena have a poignant conversation in the car outside the academy. She wants him to quit, just like he used to tell her he wanted her to do when she’d go off to work when he was a kid. She’d kiss his head, leave feeling terrible, and put aside that feeling once she got to work, she tells him. (There’s a nice parallel with Harry kissing Athena’s head as he goes back to the academy after his injury.) They can’t be afraid while on the job, the sergeant explains to her son, because then they might not make it home. He admits he didn’t think about how hard it would be for her, that he’s following in the footsteps of a man who was taken from her because of the job, but she wants him to let her worry while he learns to set that aside when he’s going into fires.

“That conversation was absolutely integral to his ability to move forward,” Cooper agrees. “He has dealt with loss in this space, and this is scary for him, but it’s also something that he feels inside of him he needs to do. And I think he needs somebody, specifically his mom, to tell him, ‘If you’re feeling this, you need to go into this with full confidence. You can’t go in here scared. It’s going to have you make mistakes.’ I need somebody who I can really, really, really trust deeply to walk me through this, which is why he’s going to Buck, but I think that mother-son relationship is really important. And I feel like that’s what pushes him over the edge in that way.”

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This episode is also him grasping what he couldn’t when he put on Bobby’s turnouts in the Halloween episode, he continues: “what this job means.”

Looking ahead to Harry’s first shift, it will be “challenging,” Cooper previews. “It’s a new venture. I think walking into a new space for anybody is challenging. And for Harry, this is a very nerve-wracking, but exciting, just really layered entry into this new space that he knows but doesn’t really fully know.”

The rest of the episode focuses on Hen’s (Aisha Hinds) beginning the long path to recovery following her dermatomyositis diagnosis, but it’s not easy and she’s feeling pretty defeated. Karen (Tracie Thoms) hires a physical therapist, Adam (Brennan Elliott), whom Hen ends up saving after he has a heart attack at the beginning of one of their sessions. And Hen’s mom (Marsha Warfield) reminds her daughter of when she was “the girl who was shot in the heart” and how she came back from that. By the end of the episode, Hen’s getting better and no longer in a wheelchair — but is using a walker — and is able to attend Harry’s graduation.

“I think that even the complexity of Hen being in there, it’s just building this overall really, really full storyline for Harry where in a lot of different spaces in his life, he’s trying to understand what change looks like and how he moves through this change,” Cooper notes. “How does he show up for Hen, who’s like an aunt to him in this moment where she’s going through this mysterious situation?”

Watch the full aftershow above for Elijah M. Cooper’s complete breakdown of this episode, Harry’s grief over losing Bobby, and much more.

9-1-1, Thursdays, 8/7c, ABC