With both Vic’s job and Crisis One in jeopardy, a flashback shows how the program has changed the lives of the team and the local community.
In the last episode, “My Way,” which can be streamed with a Hulu subscription if you missed it, we saw Vic Hughes (Barrett Doss) lose her temper in a very public way after the mayor cut the funding for Crisis One. The preview for the upcoming episode shows that now the mayor is after her job. So where do Okieriete Onaodowan and his character factor into all of this?
Crisis One is Dean Miller’s brainchild. He initiated the project, trained Vic and the other staff and — after seeing such positive results — was working on a plan to implement the system into other cities around the country. You simply can’t talk about how Crisis One has changed the firefighters and the Seattle community without Miller being a huge part of that conversation. To this day, in Season 7, the program is rarely mentioned without someone reminding the viewers that this is Miller’s legacy.
That leads to the second reason for my theory: Flashbacks. Not only are we going to look at Crisis One’s impact, we’re going to do that through a flashback. That would allow Dean Miller to still be alive. Now, could Station 19 just use scenes we’ve already seen of Miller, Hughes, et. al. in action? Sure. But I find it hard to believe that Zoanne Clack and Peter Paige would waste one minute of their shortened final season on material that’s already aired.
Of course I have no idea what Okieriete Onaodowan’s availability is like, or his interest level or what his relationship with the Station 19 producers is today (though he had nothing but sweet words for Shonda Rhimes following his final episode in 2021). This could just be wishful thinking, but it just makes so much sense.
It wouldn’t be the first time Station 19 brought back a deceased character, either. To name a few, Jonathan Bennett guest-starred as Travis Montgomery’s late husband Michael in the sweetest flashback in Season 4. Alberto Frezza returned as Ryan Tanner after his death in Season 3 in one of Andy Herrera’s dreams, and the ghost of Rigo Vasquez (Rigo Sanchez) appeared to Jack Gibson in a hallucination following his own fatal accident in Season 3.
