It’s been quite the year for Sergeant Athena Grant — or should I say, Detective Athena Grant? (More on that later!)
Angela Bassett’s Athena is the lead of ABC’s procedural drama 9-1-1, which just finished its ninth season (and has already been renewed for a tenth). For not the first (nor the second) time, Athena started the season caught up in a transportation-related disaster, and to add to that, now she’s gone and ended it with a brand-new bullet wound — but don’t worry, she’s okay!
In between those two near-death experiences (as fans will know, these are par for the course with 9-1-1), Athena spends the season processing her grief for her late husband, fire captain Bobby Nash, reporting for duty as an LAPD field sergeant, and reintegrating herself into the lives of her two adult children, May and Harry.
There’s a lot to get into, but I want to start with a bold claim about Athena in Season 9. In my humble opinion, this was her best season yet. (Sorry, Bobby!)
I know, I know — that sounds bad. Before any Bathena stans come at me, just know that I consider the resolution of Bobby and Athena’s opening arc in Season 8 to be the most romantic moment in all 142 episodes of the show (He clears an entire LA freeway for her! She safely lands a passenger jet mere inches from where he’s standing there waiting!), so I promise I’m not against seeing Athena happily married.
Instead, the reason I feel this favorably towards her treatment in Season 9, despite the absence of Bobby, really just comes down to one simple truth: narratively speaking, I think her character was perfectly handled this season.
Right from the very first episode, “Eat the Rich,” it’s clear there’s a plan for Athena. In an otherwise delightfully campy season opener — a billionaire gets swallowed by a whale! Kids get treated with hard liquor to combat a toxic exposure on their school bus! — Athena receives the episode’s sole serious subplot.
Before we even see her onscreen this season, we hear about her from May and Harry, who reveal that their mom elected to skip her late husband’s firehouse dedication ceremony. Then, in her very first appearance a moment later, Athena is fashionably dressed in a fancy restaurant and seated across the table from a handsome gentleman we don’t recognize.
It’s not actually a date, of course, but it sure looks like it at first. It’s swiftly revealed that Athena’s been undercover for several months, and this “date” is all part of a ruse, but for a few heart-stopping moments, it really does seem like Athena has already moved on from Bobby. I absolutely adore this choice of reintroduction scene — it’s a brilliantly cruel subversion that accomplishes exactly what it needs to, and I seriously haven’t stopped thinking about it since I first saw it seven months ago.
From here, in a conversation with her captain, Elaine Maynard, we discover that Athena has been hiding from her real life ever since Bobby died six months ago. She’s taken undercover gig after undercover gig after undercover gig (Elaine half-heartedly asks if she’s “angling to make detective”), but as her boss gently reminds her, it’s time to get back to her real life.
But what does this “real life” even look like for Athena anymore? We get our answer when she returns home after her shift, and the camera does a devastating pan through her apartment. She’s ostensibly lived here for six months but has yet to properly unpack. As conveyed by the cold, gray lighting and the austere decor, this place is the furthest thing from a home. Not a word is spoken in this scene, but it’s incredibly effective at communicating exactly how Athena’s feeling right now.
Later in the episode, Athena invites both May and Harry over after having accidentally discovered that Harry dropped out of high school without telling anyone. It’s clearly time for a family meeting, but the conversation deteriorates when May and Harry rightfully confront their mom about her absence from their lives for the last several months.
“Maybe if you showed up a little bit more, Mom, you’d have a clue about what goes on with your kids,” May counters after Athena questions how May could have missed the fact that Harry dropped out (given that May and Harry live together). Both kids then go on to list all the ways Athena has been deliberately pulling away from her loved ones, declining invitations, and retreating further and further into herself.
The real kicker comes with May’s brutally honest conclusion: “We lost Bobby, and we lost you, too.” Athena attempts to refute this, arguing that she is still their mother, but then it’s Harry who delivers the fatal blow on his way out the door. “You haven’t been our mother since Bobby died.”
It’s with this fight top of mind that we pick up with Athena back on patrol. She’s first on the scene for a seemingly straightforward call — someone has reported an odd smell coming from their neighbor’s apartment. However, as is the 9-1-1 way, the situation quickly takes a turn with the reveal that the odor is coming from the longtime tenant’s corpse…or not? Athena receives quite the shock when the “dead” body she’s inspecting suddenly springs back to life in a classic pre-commercial jump scare.
It turns out this woman, Gina, likely developed necrotizing fasciitis from a wound on her hand and has pretty much been “rotting alive” alone in her apartment for weeks. As the 118 firefighters arrive and get to work stabilizing the patient, Tears for Fears’ “Mad World” underscores a flashback montage that shows exactly what went wrong over the years for Gina to end up in such an isolated, tragic state. Being confronted with Gina’s stark reality is a major wake-up call for Athena. If she continues down this lonely path, she’s deliberately kept herself on since Bobby’s death; what’s stopping her from one day meeting a fate similar to Gina’s?
It’s this very sentiment that Athena expresses to her best friend, firefighter Hen Wilson, at the end of the episode. “You can’t help but wonder if they stopped calling or she stopped answering,” Athena says of Gina’s previous loved ones. “She’s not you,” Hen points out, but Athena’s not fully convinced. She explains how difficult it is to be around people who loved Bobby, including her own kids, which is why she avoided the dedication ceremony (among many other gatherings over the last six months).
“I don’t wanna talk about him. I just want to talk to him, and I can’t do that ever again,” she tells Hen, who empathizes, of course, reminding Athena that she can take whatever time she needs and grieve however she likes, and that it won’t stop her and her wife, Karen, from inviting Athena over. “We ain’t gonna never stop calling you,” she reminds her best friend.
“Oh, don’t you worry about me,” Athena reassures her. “I have learned my lesson. Next invitation I get, the answer is yes.” From the look on Hen’s face, it’s immediately clear what this “next invitation” will be, given that we already learned earlier in the episode that she’s been invited to join a space tourism trip — and she’s got a plus one. We also know that this space situation will become Season 9’s multi-episode opening emergency (a 9-1-1 staple).
In Episodes 2 and 3, “Spiraling” and “The Sky Is Falling,” Athena, alongside Hen, prepares for, embarks on, and subsequently deals with the fallout of their shuttle launch. It’s supposed to be a safe, simple, three-hour trip up in Earth’s orbit, but of course, plans quickly go awry thanks to a geomagnetic storm — or “space hurricane,” as Athena calls it — that the billionaire funding this jaunt orders his team to ignore on launch day.
There’s a lot going on as the sky is literally falling, so we understandably don’t spend much time specifically in Athena’s POV in these intervening episodes, but all that changes with the fourth installment, “Reentry.”
It should be noted that this is not your typical 9-1-1 episode. Yes, it is technically the conclusion to the four-episode space arc, but “Reentry” is effectively the spiritual successor to a 9-1-1 episode format from years past, the “Begins” episodes. These were backstory episodes that focused on one main character at a time and alternated between present-day emergencies and flashback stories, with the general conceit being to showcase each character’s journey to becoming a first responder.
While almost every series regular, including Athena, has had a “Begins” episode over the years, there’s only ever been one “Begins Again” episode (Season 2’s “Bobby Begins Again”) — until now.
Sure, this episode is titled “Reentry” and not “Athena Begins Again,” but it might as well be. While Athena and Hen continue to cope with their crisis in outer space, we spend the episode repeatedly cutting back to Athena and her patrol partner, Officer Brogan McCluskey, on the scene of a bank robbery in 1998.
We met McCluskey back in Season 3’s “Athena Begins,” but as 9-1-1 viewers know, Athena has been without a partner in her police cruiser for the entire run of the series. Here in “Reentry,” we finally find out why.
As it turns out, McCluskey was killed in the line of duty, and we experience this episode via a series of flashbacks. After McCluskey suffers a shot to the torso, Athena insists that they’ll both be okay (she herself got a bullet to the leg in the melee), but her partner knows better. “I’m not making it out of here…but you might.”
He proceeds to outline his hopes for a grand funeral befitting a public servant. He wants “the works,” which apparently includes a velvet-lined casket and bagpipes, among other features. If this sounds familiar, it should — McCluskey is describing the very funeral Athena wanted no part in planning for Bobby back in Season 8’s “The Last Alarm.”
“Say something nice about me,” McCluskey instructs Athena. “Extol my virtues. You know, lie if you have to. But after that…you never set foot on my grave again. I’m serious about that. You have to move on. Move forward or whatever. Just move.” He says all this because he knows Athena, perhaps better than anyone at this point, and has worked day in, day out with her for years. He knows what might happen if Athena stays buried in her own grief.
Because the thing is, McCluskey isn’t even Athena’s first traumatic loss — her fiancé, Emmett, was murdered at a convenience store eight years prior (as depicted in “Athena Begins”) — and, as we, the viewers, are aware, he’s also not her most recent one, given Bobby’s death on the job in Season 8’s “Lab Rats.”
McCluskey’s dying request is that Athena “get rid of the jewelry,” the engagement ring from Emmett that she wears on a chain underneath her uniform. “It’s not regulation,” he points out, to which a tearful Athena counters, “Since when do you care about regulation?” He tells her, “You’re supposed to learn from me, not become me,” and this comment feels especially pertinent in light of what we’ve seen with Athena’s present-day grief over Bobby.
I explore this further in a different article, but Athena is ultimately able to embark on her healing journey thanks to a conversation she shares with her past self (the version from 1998) in a remarkable moment that sees both Athena Grants meeting in a liminal space (an impossible interaction brought about by Athena teetering on the edge of oxygen deprivation out in space).
When faced with her younger self, Athena’s ensuing meditation on grief and loss is exactly what she needs to hear right now, and what she needed to hear 27 years prior, and it allows her to do what McCluskey wanted all along — move forward.
As soon as she, Hen, and the rest of their unfortunate crew safely make it home towards the end of “Reentry,” Athena’s priority is reconciling with her kids. Serving as a nice bookend to the previous Grant family conversation, Athena, May, and Harry reconvene in Athena’s apartment for a much more productive family meeting. Harry feels remorseful for how he and Athena left things, telling Athena, “I know things weren’t the greatest between us before you left for space, and I’m really sorry about that. Me not knowing if we’d ever have a chance to talk again…”
Athena seizes the opportunity to apologize for not being present these last few months. “I wish I had a great excuse,” she says to her kids. May reminds her that she’s been grieving, but Athena counters with, “But so have you. I’m sorry you had to do it without me.” She hopes they can forgive her — and of course they can, because they all love each other.
Amends made, Athena smoothly transitions back into mom mode, informing Harry that he’s going to need a plan for his future. Much to both Athena’s and May’s surprise, it turns out Harry does have a plan — thanks to his experience riding along with the 118 during the space crisis (as seen in the last four episodes), he’s decided to become a firefighter… You know, the job that Bobby died doing.
Such an announcement might seem poised to upend Athena’s healing process, but the Athena of “Reentry” is not the same one we were reintroduced to in “Eat the Rich.” Athena may not be thrilled about the idea of her son following in the dangerous footsteps of her late husband, and this gets explored in later episodes like “Día de los Muertos” and “Fighting Back,” but she’s also in a much better place now than she was when the season began.
Simply put, she’s undergone significant character evolution, and we’re only four episodes in! As she says in her voiceover to close out the space arc, “Thing about this Earth is that it just keeps turning. And what can you do except turn with it?” Having watched her journey these past four episodes, we know that Athena will keep moving, keep turning, keep living.
After such a monumental arc to open the season, it makes sense that Athena then takes a bit of a backseat for the next several episodes. Her screentime is largely dedicated to doing what she’d neglected since Bobby’s death — being present in her kids’ lives. Whether that’s navigating Harry’s journey from LAFD candidate to cadet to probationary firefighter, May’s crisis of faith when it comes to her own career (resulting in a decision to enter an accelerated nursing program after completing her unrelated bachelor’s degree), or even May and Harry’s sibling squabble over their respective relationships with Harry’s coworker, Ravi, there’s no denying that Athena spends the rest of Season 9 once again attuned to her family.
It’s especially rewarding to see this side of Athena, given that a major question I had heading into 9-1-1 Season 9 was how the show would continue to integrate her, the sole police officer of the lead cast, with the 118 firehouse now that her main point of connection was gone. Fortunately, it was announced over hiatus last summer that May and Harry would return as series regulars for the first time in several seasons, and as Season 9 demonstrates, this decision has hugely benefited Athena’s story.
The final stretch of the season sees Athena return to the forefront after having operated in a more supportive capacity for the intervening episodes. This starts with Episode 15, “Pick Your Poison,” and the focus is more professional this time as we watch Athena uncover clues for an investigation that ends up carrying through to the season finale, “Hearts and Flowers.”
Now, she may be a field sergeant, but it’s not uncommon for Athena to conduct investigations on 9-1-1. In fact, she spends most of Bobby’s funeral episode in Season 8’s “The Last Alarm” trying to solve the mystery of a grieving mother who thought her child might have been abducted (as opposed to perishing in a house fire eight years prior). At one point, she even speaks with Bobby’s ghost about this investigation in what ends up being the very last time Bobby and Athena ever share the screen together.
“This woman, her loss, it was important to you. You would have helped her. I’m doing it because you can’t,” Athena tells him. Bobby’s ghost asks her, “How can you know that?” and Athena insists it’s because she knows him, but he counters with an incredibly harsh truth: “You knew me. Past tense.” Despite the beliefs of his ghost (really just a projection of Athena’s mind), we know Bobby would have joined Athena in such an investigation — it’s something we saw countless times over the years — so Athena continuing to nurture her propensity for investigative work can be thought of as something she’s doing in honor of Bobby.
Plus, there’s also the fact that she’s really good at this. As we’ve seen time and time again, Athena’s got good instincts as a detective. She’s dedicated, cunning, and relentless when it comes to uncovering the truth, and she suffers no fools. I count myself among those who hoped to eventually see Athena make the jump to detective, but at the same time, I didn’t feel like it was a choice that a procedural drama, characterized by its consistency, could afford to commit to. After all, this show is about first responders, which includes firefighters, dispatchers, and yes, police officers. How would the show incorporate that last branch if their main law enforcement character no longer patrolled the streets?
Well, the good news is that it appears this question will be answered in Season 10, given that the Season 9 finale, “Hearts and Flowers,” finally takes the plunge and shows Athena (figuratively) handing over the keys to her police cruiser in exchange for a detective badge.
This is an extremely thrilling development for Athena, and one I commend the show for daring to orchestrate — Athena switching from sergeant to detective is the character’s biggest professional shakeup in her entire nine-year history on 9-1-1, and it’s one that’s completely earned. Her decision is ultimately made in a coma dream of all places, after Athena gets shot during a raid at the end of the penultimate episode, “I Got You Babe,” and has to be put on life support.
Throughout the finale, despite her being unconscious on the operating table or hooked up to a ventilator, Athena’s POV is conveyed to us via a series of visits to a waystation. It’s here that she encounters the spirit of McCluskey and comes to understand that her time might be running out — if not literally when she’s decompensating in the operating room, then at least professionally as a field sergeant.
At one point, Athena asks McCluskey if he ever thought about quitting his job. “I mean, you were on the beat for a long time, and no one can do this forever, right?” McCluskey responds matter-of-factly: “Sure. But sometimes, we die first.” It’s a sobering reminder for Athena, who watched him die on the job, not to take her own life for granted.
Speaking of, this is something McCluskey commends his partner for. “You got a family and a job to get back to. You built a beautiful life for yourself.” He tells her he’s proud of her, and it’s a deeply moving sentiment in light of Athena’s parallel journeys in “Reentry” and her interactions with May, Harry, and the 118 firehouse crew throughout the rest of the season.
While she’s still in the waystation with McCluskey, Athena mulls over the possibility of making a career change of her own. “It’s just all these years sitting in our car…staring out into the world every day. Different people, but the same problems and nothing ever changes. I’m starting to feel like a hamster on a wheel. Is that a sign that I should do something?”
McCluskey, who died at a time when he understood Athena perhaps better than anybody, tells her now, “Athena, If you’re tired of the view, maybe you should get out of the damn car.” And get out of the damn car, she does — after breaking the news to her captain, Athena’s final scene of Season 9 is her on the job as a newly minted detective, shiny new detective badge on full display. She’s come a long way from hiding from her own life back at the start of the season.
In contrast, Athena closed out the Season 8 finale with an introduction to Bobby’s namesake, Robert Nash Han, the newborn son of Bobby’s firefighter teammate Chimney Han and Chimney’s wife, Maddie. Shortly before that, as part of the Season 8 ending montage, Athena sold her house — the one she and Bobby had spent all season rebuilding prior to his untimely death in “Lab Rats” — and I remember being fearful that this might be signaling the end of her time on the show (or at the very least, the beginning of a phasing out process).
In retrospect, I probably should have listened more closely to the lyrics of the song playing during this montage, “Tragedy Is Not the End.” As Joel Ansett sings in the final line of his song, “This tragedy is not the end of the story,” and as Season 9 has more than proven, this moment in Season 8 certainly wasn’t the end of Athena’s story, either.
Because not only did Athena Grant go on to have a phenomenal subsequent season, but as her final scene this time around indicates, there are still plenty more stories left to tell.
Now streaming on Hulu: What are your thoughts on Athena Grant’s arc in 9-1-1 Season 9? Let us know in the comments below.
First Featured Image Credit: (Disney/Christopher Willard)