“Station 19”: Does the ending of “Station 19” really satisfy the audience?

Station 19 has officially come to an end, but the Shondaland firefighter drama went out with a massive bang and delivered an emotional final chapter for fans. The final episode picked up moments after last week’s cliffhanger with Maya (Danielle Savre) surrounded by flames and Theo (Carlos Miranda) being rushed to the hospital after being crushed by a tree branch. If fans watched Grey’s Anatomy before tuning in to Station 19, then they know that Theo survived his injuries and was able to keep his leg. Maya also wasn’t in grave danger for too long because a helicopter dropped water over the scene and gave her an exit out of the inferno.

However, the danger was not over for the Station 19 firefighters. The unpredictable winds picked up and started a fire tornado that killed Kate Powell (Kiele Sanchez) and forced the crew to hunker down under their fire blankets and wait for the flames to pass. As each member of the crew faced potential death, there was a flash forward to their potential future.

Maya saw her and Carina (Stefania Spampanito) having two more children and raising their family together. Travis (Jay Hayden) saw himself visiting museums with his new boyfriend and Vic (Barrett Doss) in D.C.. Sullivan (Boris Kodjoe) and Ross (Merle Dandridge) saw themselves getting married and starting a veteran-to-firefighters program. Theo saw himself transitioning to fire inspector with a new wife and baby. Ben (Jason Winston George) saw his two sons graduate from college and Prue graduate from the fire academy. Beckett (Josh Randall) saw himself playing pickleball with Ross’ sister against his former rival and his wife. Vic saw herself leading Crisis One, with a special cameo from Dean (Okieriete Onoadowan).

Andy (Jaina Lee Ortiz) was the last one to have a future dream because she left the team hunkering down to go find help. The journey was exhausting, though, and she collapsed immediately after bringing backup and putting out the new flames. In the hospital, she revisited her and Gibson (Grey Damon) making out in the locker room in the pilot. The flash-forward implied that sparks still remain between the exes-turned-best-friends.

Andy survived the collapse. Everyone from the station survived the wildfire, which was a huge relief. The show jumped forward in time three months to show Vic’s goodbye party before she left for the east coast. Travis ultimately decided to follow her to help get the national Crisis One program off the board. Ben officially decided to go back to medicine and finish his surgical residency. Another jump forward in time revealed Maya became captain of Station 19—overseeing Prue as an official firefighter—while Andy moved up to Seattle Fire Chief.

It was a bittersweet conclusion to the show, but it did allow for everyone to see the firefighters get a happy ending. Parade talked to Season 7 showrunners Zoanne Clack and Peter Paige, who wrote and directed the final episodes, respectively, to answer our remaining burning questions about the series.

How did you come up with the concept of these dream futures and putting your spin on the Six Feet Under finale format?

Zoanne Clack: I watched a lot of series finales and Six Feet Under was one of them…I really wanted to figure out how to push forward in our own way. And I really wanted to use those fire filters that look like a baked potato. What would you think about when you were in there, when you’re in that last possible moment and the fire is over you? How would you go on or push forward? Would you think about the potential future in store for you, what you had to live for? That’s how we came up with them happening throughout the episode.

Did all of the future-dreams come to you naturally or were there any characters you found hard to crack?

Clack: We originally had two futures for everyone, which was obviously way too long. We had a personal and professional [future] for everyone. We had to squeeze those down, so that was hard. Then we weren’t quite satisfied with the Andy and Vic dreams at first. We continued to work on those throughout while we were prepping and shooting to solidify what was the deepest and most satisfying flash-forwards for them.

Peter Paige: We came up with both of those pretty late in the game. We were already shooting when we came up with the Vic one with Dean and then Andy and Jack traveling back into the pilot.

Let’s talk about Vic and Dean. What was the significance of having him come back in that dream? It made me wonder if she was dead in that moment.

Clack: Thematically, a lot of what the episode was doing was reaching to the past to tell their future. She was moving on with Crisis One. She was this bigwig. I am not sure if you saw this, but she has a Ph.D in psychology. She’s really taking this thing far and the person who started it all was there saying they were proud of her.

Paige: It wasn’t just about seeing Dean because he’s dead. He’s the person she needs to hear from that she had done good. She made good on her promises to him. That’s what it was about.

Travis ultimately decides to go to D.C. with Vic. Why did their friendship feel like the right endgame instead of Vic and Theo?

Paige: We have three main love stories on this show. We have this Black power couple who bring out softness and joy in each other. We have this queer couple that have undone generations of damage in order to find each other and build a life together. Then we have what I keep calling the “platonic-com.” They are the great loves of each other’s lives. That is important. They are family and it is every bit as beautiful and valuable as a great romance. That’s where we chose to end our show because that is worth celebrating.

Clack: It’s such a beautiful thing to have these platonic relationships. We’re glad you asked about Theo because we wanted people to feel like maybe she would go back at different points in the final two episodes. Ultimately, they had what they had and she is moving forward with her best friend.

Jack and Andy did not make that list of great couples. What is their relationship status at the end of the show and after Andy’s future-dream?

Paige: You saw the flash-forward, which is her hopes and dreams and her realization that maybe Jack is the one. Maybe he’s always been the one. Then you see at Vic’s going away party this chemistry between them. You see this casual intimacy and you’re left to infer. You see him at her bedside, holding her hand and saying she never has to be alone. You can do with that what you will. I only didn’t mention it because it’s the more classic and expected romance, but it is there.

I was emotionally preparing for at least one major casualty in this finale and was very relieved to see no one in the core group died. What led to the decision to kill Kate in the finale?

Clack: There was a lot of talk about who was going to die, or how many people were going to die. Were we just going to kill everybody? There was a lot of talk about people dying. For me, I did not want to live in the grief of that at the end of the show. Having one of the major characters die would have ended the show in grief. We could have a flash-forward to two years later. We’ve seen it done on the show many times where people very close to us have died and we have to come back from it. We don’t have the chance to come back this time. I felt like we could get the emotion of the end of the series without killing off a major character. So we didn’t have a lust for blood, but we wanted to show the intensity of the fire tornado and what the costs could be, why the stakes were so high for them. That helped us intensify the stakes.

What stage are you at in conversations about a potential Crisis One spinoff?

Paige: They’re not as far along as you might hope.

Clack: It’s in my head or in his head. Maybe both.

One of the most charged moments of the finale was seeing Prue join 19 as an adult. Can you talk about putting that in there and continuing this thread of 19 being a generational firehouse?

Clack: A large focus for the season was community and what community means to Station 19. What we really wanted to do with this finale was show all the hopes and things that we’re fighting for and how they extend beyond Station 19. Andy’s whole last speech and Prue being in the firehouse was all of it coming together that we can use our past to move forward, and just take all of those values and concepts into the world.

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