‘9-1-1: Nashville’ Boss Reveals What’s Next After Blythe & Dixie’s Major Fight and Don’s Decision

All season, Blythe (Jessica Capshaw) and Dixie (LeAnn Rimes) have been fighting, and it culminates in one hell of a final scene of the 9-1-1: Nashville Season 1 ender. TV Insider spoke with showrunner Rashad Raisani about that and much more, plus early Season 2 details. Warning: Spoilers for the 9-1-1: Nashville Season 1 finale ahead!

Dixie comes up with a new proposal to stop her from releasing her next diss track about Blythe: Don (Chris O’Donnell), who’s been wrestling with dreams about her, spends the night with her. Don, after the fights he has with Blythe, seems to be about to go through with it … until he makes the decision to return home to his wife. But Blythe goes and confronts Dixie, revealing she bought out her contract from the label. Dixie, in turn, shows her the texts from Don … leading to an all-out fight between the two. The episode ends in the middle of it.

Elsewhere, Sam (MacKenzie Porter) and Ryan (Michael Provost) get some bad news while at her OB: a mass on her left ovary. She has the necessary tests, but as they wait for the results, she reveals that she won’t have the necessary surgeries — hysterectomy and oophorectomy because it would mean that she wouldn’t be able to have kids. Ryan’s against it, at first, but he comes around to standing by her decision.

Below, showrunner Rashad Raisani breaks down the Season 1 finale and teases what’s ahead.

When did you know you wanted to end the season with that Blythe and Dixie fight?

Rashad Raisani: Yeah, I think we always knew that they were kind of the driving conflict. They represent the driving conflict between these two different sides, and so I think it was always going to be a culmination of that. And then I think as we went through our season and we watched Jessica and LeAnn’s chemistry and the things that they both do really well is I feel we were able to dig deeper and deeper into both of them. And I think they bring out the best in each other, too, so it’s always fun to get them on screen together.

So they hate each other, but does either of them hate the other enough to kill her?

Not on purpose, I don’t think. And I think also, as they’re going to find out in Season 2, that I think a lot of their anger is a bit displaced, and that’s going to get unpacked as well. I think that Blythe is surprised at what Dixie pulls out of her, and it really pisses her off that Dixie gets so under her skin that she gets her to act so out of control, and that’s part of Dixie’s power. But I think Blythe shows that she can throw down at the end in a way that maybe even Dixie wasn’t expecting. So we wanted to show both sides, that they both are stronger than the other one gives the other one credit for.

And it feels like Dixie knows exactly where to hit Blythe, what hurts the most. And I don’t think anyone else can do that in the same way.

No, I don’t think so either. But I think that’s also part of what Blythe’s journey at the end was, is to worry less about what other people say in society and reputation, and to also discover in the last episode of the first season that her dad, who I think represents a lot of the things that she’s worried about, that he loves her for who she is. So I think that empowered her a lot to just say, “Well, f**k it, I’m going to go at Dixie.”

Also, it’s because Dixie is honest, and it’s like Don is struggling to be honest even with himself, so he can’t be honest with Blythe, right?

Yeah, exactly. I think that’s the real problem.

So, what can you tease about the outcome of that fight when Season 2 begins? Are you picking up right away? Are they still fighting when the premiere begins?

The fight actually went on much longer in the way we shot it, but I just thought it was more shocking and compelling to just cut it off at a moment of explosion and not play it all the way through this sort of big, choreographed fight. What I can say is that we will pay it off in Season 2, but we may make the audience wonder a little bit for a while about exactly what happened, how injured everybody was, and what happened after. So, we’ll do a very small time jump in Season 2, but allow people to kind of wonder and then answer the question about what happened.

So going back to Don, who is struggling to be honest with himself, because he decided not to go through it with Dixie, but he was tempted. He sent those messages; he was driving there. Was he perhaps surprised by how much he was tempted?

For sure. I think that all of these characters are not as … Maybe in the other 9-1-1s, I feel like in Lone Star and OG — I think that I wanted to see if these characters maybe weren’t quite as grounded emotionally as maybe some of the other ones were, that they’re a little less stable, even though they appear to be stable. And so I think that was one of the things that we wanted to explore in this episode, is that maybe Don isn’t as … Maybe all three of you … Well, Dixie is always pretty unapologetic about how unstable she is. But I think for Blythe and Don, it was to show that they have this veneer of stability and control, but it’s much shakier than I think either of them want to realize.

And that was also why I think Dixie, she played that card of Blythe going back with her ex because she knew that that was Don’s kryptonite. And then when Don sees them together, even though he misunderstands exactly what’s happening, I think that was the breaking point for him that allowed him to sort of justify to himself, well, if she’s doing that … And I think he also still justifies that, well, look, even if I did step out with Dixie, I’m doing it to end this war. And so maybe he can convince himself, I think, believing a lie that he’s telling himself, but he can convince himself that maybe at the end of the day, it’s the least of the evils.

Don did decide not to go through it, but Blythe does know that he made those plans because Dixie very happily showed those text messages. So, what can you say about what this means for Don and Blythe’s marriage now going forward? Because he didn’t stray, but he wanted to, and she knows that.

Yeah. I think it’s going to have a major impact, and I think it’s going to take Blythe — it’s a lot for her to process because it is a betrayal, like you said. And I think for Don’s sake, he’s like, ” Look, I turned around. I called it off,” but for her, it’s like, “You said yes, you were in, and you were on your way.” And I think that’s going to be a major strain and a place where they’re going to start Season 2.

Sam and Ryan got on the same page about their future, no matter the results. But now that the results are in, whatever they are, the thing is if it’s bad news, can he stick to what he said if he’s being faced with truly losing her? How steady is he in his resolve, would you say?

Well, I think the thing that he goes through at the end of the season is that he does learn that it’s really, truly Sam’s choice, and he believes in Sam. Maybe he’ll feel like he might tell Don or tell somebody about, “Oh, I’m worried,” but I think he’s going to be fully behind Sam. If Sam changes her mind, then he’s all for it, but he’s not going to … I think he’s past trying to talk her out of what he feels in her heart that she feels strongly about doing. So I think he hopes to God that it’s all going to work out, but he’s behind her.

So what can you say about what’s coming up for them in Season 2? Because they could have a really tough road ahead of them.

It is going to be tough.

Cammie (Kimberly Williams-Paisley) and Turner (Coby Bell) like them together, and she is happy. What are you enjoying about that pairing? And had you set out to bring him in as her new love interest and someone who seems like he could have a role in Season 2 from the beginning, or was that just what you saw there?

Well, full disclosure, I’ve known Coby Bell for a long time. I’ve worked with him on two different shows. This is the third show I’ve done [with him]. So I always know he’s going to be great. And we had always in our mind thought, well, her arc this season is going to be that she will start to open the doors back to moving on, which she did. And so we had in our minds that if they have chemistry, it might be a fun thing to just start to very incrementally let it bud and grow. And it wasn’t something that we said, well, she needs to have a dating arc. It was more, if it works. And I think that they had this real warmth with each other. He was kind of exactly what I think she needed to come out of her shell and out of her place of protection, self-protection. So we’re still figuring out where they’re going to go in Season 2, but I think that they’re just so delightful together. So I think there’s a really good chance that we’ll see more of him.

Blue’s (Hunter McVey) kind of separated himself from Dixie, is living on his own, but does he feel like he’s going to get pulled back in or does he think that’s actually going to work?

I think he’s fool me once, fool me twice, fool me three times about his mom and her manipulations. I think that he is growing up. By the end of Season 1, he’s truly moved out on his own. I think that maybe what we’ll go to in Season 2 is that now he has to kind of — Dixie may not be in such a great place herself, and so he has to be kind of a rock in a different way for her that he’s like, “I’m finally out,” and then she needs help. So I think she may be less in the power position when it comes to him, but he’s still going to be a mama’s boy no matter until the day he dies. So I think his growth is legitimate. I don’t think she’s going to be able to pull the wool over his eyes anymore the way that she has been able to in Season 1.

Blue and Taylor (Hailey Kilgore) are going strong, they may be the most stable couple right now in terms of there are no internal or external forces pushing on them at the end of the season or looming on the horizon. Did you always set out that once you get them together, for now they’re going to be together, even though he does move out?

Yeah, I think in Season 1, we definitely wanted to give them a happy ending for sure and let the audience have that because obviously the other two storylines in the finale don’t have happy endings really. Now what that means for them going forward, the more that people hopefully get attached to that relationship, the more people will care if something bad happens to it or if it goes through some stresses. So I think that in Season 2, it may not be quite as smooth sailing, but definitely in Season 1, we wanted to give them just a happy ending.

You put Roxie (Juani Feliz) through quite a bit off the clock, on the clock. What’s coming up for her in Season 2?

She’s now kind of taking the first steps out in her romantic dating life. And we still have so much — the previous episode, when she goes on her date, the chicken date, we had been trying to do that episode for seven episodes, but the ground kept shifting, and we had the other stories we were doing. And so the thing I’m just really excited to do is just giving Roxie more and more screen time and giving her more and more personal stories. We’ve suggested that she has a pretty complicated relationship with her parents, and her life back in New York is this sort of looming mystery about what was going on there and the exact reasons why she left and what she left behind. And so we’ve definitely talked a lot about bringing some of her New York history to Nashville and maybe sending her back to New York and talking about where she comes from. And so I think her spiritual life, we hint at it at the very beginning of the series, and I think she’ll kind of go down that road in Season 2 as well.

Speaking of love lives, I feel like Dixie just really needs someone to move on with. Have there been conversations about that?

There have been. And I think Season 1 was always about the Battle of the Blondes, you know what I mean, at the end of the season. And so if she went on a different date with someone else, it might take some of the energy out of that. But I think going into Season 2, she’s going to be a changed person. She’s still Dixie, but I think her record contract is now owned by Blythe. Blythe and Don’s marriage is no longer going to be at least what it was, but I think both of these women are going to see how much damage they’ve done to themselves and for what. And so I think Dixie is going to start to move on. And I think her romantic life will take some other — That said, I think we kind of winked that maybe she did have a little bit of a dalliance with Buck [Oliver Stark] in the crossover, but either way, I think that it would be fun to see Dixie start to have a bit more of a less codependent relationship start and to see what that looks like for her.

Yeah, I liked the Buck and Dixie thing because it felt like it was just something fun. There was no question of, oh, is this going to become a crossover romance?

Yeah, exactly.

What do you imagine the Bennings-Hart family dynamics look like in Season 2?

Well, I mean, you put your finger on it earlier. I think that a lot of it is going to be driven by Blythe and Don’s marriage, and the Hart family’s going to have its own issues this year. Dixie and Blythe and Blue, I think, are going to get past some of their knee-jerk attack mode with each other because they’re going to go through some stuff together. And I actually see Dixie and Blythe starting to bond more on the other side of some of this stuff. And I know that there’s some chatter about that and we see it, too. And so I think who knows where we’re going to go with that, but I definitely see them turning a leaf over in their relationship. They’ll always have that strain of frenemies, but maybe we’ll lean into a little bit more of the friend part of the frenemy at various aspects. And so that will also bleed into the Hart-Bennings’ family relationships.

What else can you tease about Season 2?

Cammie is going to get a new boss from hell and put her through a great storyline that we’re doing.

Cammie’s boss you mentioned, this would be a recurring character?

Yeah, we think it may be somebody who joins who’s got some very twisted and dark secrets themselves that will unfold as the season goes on.

And all the main cast is returning in the same status, right?

Yep, 100%.

9-1-1: Nashville, Season 2, TBA, ABC