Spoilers ahead!
This week’s 9-1-1 Holy Mother of God, the directorial debut of Aisha Hinds, our beloved Hen, is one for the books.
The main storyline revolves around Bobby (Peter Krause) meeting again in unexpected circumstances his estranged mother Ann (Leslie Ann Warren) and his brother Charlie (Sean O'Bryan). Ann is the leader of a mega-church going on a tour of some kind, and she will spend just a few days in L.A. with Charlie.
“Holy Mother of God” – 9-1-1. Pictured: Leslie Ann Warren as Ann, Peter Krause as Bobby. Photo: Christopher Willard/ABC © 2025 Disney. All rights reserved.
After a big accident happens at the church and the 118 comes to help, Charlie reads it as divine providence trying to reunite his family, which makes him organize a dinner with Ann, Bobby, and Athena (Angela Bassett) — needless to say, this meeting doesn’t go as expected, with the growing tensions between Ann and Bobby leading them to say painful stuff that has been buried for years to each other. The 118 deals with the emergency of an abusive husband trying to kill his wife, making Bobby think about the hard choice his mother faced when she left his abusive father. Then, Bobby goes to her church, getting to watch as she passes out in front of her audience. Later, he discovers that Ann is facing terminal cancer and doesn’t have much time left, and in a beautiful scene, they reconnect and make amends.
Meanwhile, Buck (Oliver Stark) is suffering because of Eddie’s (Ryan Guzman) departure. Although Eddie doesn’t even appear in this episode, he ghosts the narrative from the get-go, from Bobby mistakenly calling Ravi (Anirudh Pisharody) Eddie to Buck bringing his best friend up in almost every conversation.
“Holy Mother of God” – 9-1-1. Pictured: Anirudh Pisharody as Ravi. Photo: Christopher Willard/ABC © 2025 Disney. All rights reserved.
It’s important that Buck can’t sleep in Eddie’s house and can’t unpack his stuff — so after he goes to Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Chimney’s (Kenneth Choi) house to stay with them for a while, Maddie suggests that Buck should make other friends. Buck tries to befriend Ravi, asking him out for some drinks after work, but that turns out awkward after Buck keeps talking about Eddie.
That’s when Ravi brings Tommy (Lou Ferrigno Jr.) to the table and leaves them alone. It’s Buck and Tommy’s first meeting after the breakup. They reconnect and spend the night together, but in the morning after, Tommy drops a bombshell: he’d be comfortable with seeing Buck more often now that “his competition is gone”, which infuriates Buck, who immediately recognizes that Tommy is talking about Eddie and answers that he doesn’t “have to want to sleep with everyone [he has] feelings for” and he doesn’t have “to have feelings for everyone [he sleeps with]”.
“I don’t have to want to sleep with everyone I have feelings for, and I don’t have to have feelings for everyone I sleep with.”
Later, Buck brings this to Maddie, who quickly affirms that it “wouldn’t be so crazy” if Buck was indeed in love with Eddie. Interestingly, the “in love with Eddie” part was never said by either Tommy or Maddie; the first one talked about “competition” without saying much after this, and the latter only reacted to something Buck himself brought to the table.
“What’s that even supposed to mean, I’m living in Eddie’s old house, therefore I must be in love with him?”
“Holy Mother of God” – 9-1-1. Pictured: Jennifer Love Hewitt as Maddie. Photo: Christopher Willard/ABC © 2025 Disney. All rights reserved.
Buck denies it, saying that Eddie is straight, and he wouldn't be "hopelessly pining" for his straight bestie... Which is interesting because he said the same to Tommy. Eddie being straight in Buck’s vision seems a big problem that keeps him from considering that they could be more than friends. If Eddie turned out to be not straight, however…
As the episode ends, Bobby reconciles with his mother, Buck unpacks his stuff and makes his new place his own, and Athena is called to an emergency that leads her to the luxury cruise ship The Odyssey — this ends with a cliffhanger, so to know more about what happened after this you have to watch this week’s Doctor Odyssey.
Holy Mother of God had me dizzy after its ending. Aisha makes a great debut as a director, delivering an episode that’s both filled with comedy (Ravi’s return as a replacement to Eddie is a great factor in this) and drama — special props to the hair department for what they did with Maddie and Buck in this one, great work. I am usually not a fan of how this show redeems the parents, many times forgetting to properly deal with the bad they have done, but in this case, it worked: Leslie Ann Warren and Sean O'Bryan are great additions to this universe, and the Bobby-lore brought by their characters is nothing short of emotional.
“Holy Mother of God” – 9-1-1. Pictured: Leslie Ann Warren as Ann, Peter Krause as Bobby. Photo: Christopher Willard/ABC © 2025 Disney. All rights reserved.
Also, this episode marks Tommy’s return to tie up some loose ends regarding his relationship with Buck, implicitly confirming that their breakup happened because he was jealous of Eddie, making their relationship haunted by Eddie from the beginning to the end — everything about them, even their one night stand and subsequent fight, is about Eddie too. Interestingly, Buck shows little to no interest in going back to a serious relationship with Tommy too, even admitting that he might have used him to forget about Eddie. I don’t have any insider information, but it’s interesting how this year’s first three episodes had so many things to say about Buck and Eddie — it looks like Buddie canon is not a distant, impossible, crazy thing anymore. It actually could be just around the corner.
Now tell me how you feel about this episode! Feel free to leave a comment with your impressions and theories, and thanks for reading!
