SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers for “One Last Time,” the series finale of ABC’s“Station 19,” now streaming on Hulu.
For a show that spent most of its time putting its characters in mortal danger, it’s remarkable that “Station 19” completed its series finale with nearly everyone alive and well — except, of course, for Kate (Kiele Sanchez), the newest addition to 19 who never did quite manage to become a part of the family. Kate got sucked up into a fire tornado — a firenado, perhaps — becoming the finale’s only casualty. Despite injuries and burns and smoke inhalation, everyone else lived on to firefight another day, with visions of their bright futures dancing ahead of them. After years of dealing with the harsh realities of firefighting, they all got their happy ending.
The episode, which was directed by showrunner Peter Paige, spent most of its time continuing to deal with the massive wildfire that was hurtling toward Seattle. Theo (Carlos Miranda) was injured by a falling tree, but quickly patched up by doctors at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. Maya (Danielle Savre) was saved from a huge wall of fire by her coworkers, which was great news for her newly pregnant wife Carina (Stefania Spampinato). Andy (Jaina Lee Ortiz) endangered herself by protecting her team on her own, landing herself in the hospital with burns but no major damage.
As they all faced the possibility that this fire could be their last, the members of Station 19 each envisioned the future they were fighting for. Maya saw a big family with Carina, featuring at least four kids and some classic mom haircuts, while Theo pictured a wife and son. Ben (Jason George) saw himself and Miranda (Chandra Wilson) sitting in auditoriums watching their kids — Tuck, Joey, and Prue — graduate with honors. Travis (Jay Hayden) imagined touring museums in D.C. with Vic and Dom (Johnny Sibilly) by his side, while Vic hoped for huge success for Crisis One with Dean (Okieriete Onaodowan, in a guest appearance) cheering her on from the afterlife. Sullivan (Boris Kodjoe) and Ross (Merle Dandridge) got married and played tennis with Beckett (Josh Randall) and Ross’ sister Jinny (Yunjin Kim).
Andy, as she lay unconscious in her hospital bed after having her burns debrided, watched the moment her relationship with Jack (Grey Damon) fell apart back in Season 1 — only for present day Jack to show up and take her in his arms. And sure, it was a dream, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t also real.
While the idea is that these visions are just hopes visualized in moments of great fear, Paige and co-showrunner Zoanne Clack aren’t saying they didn’t happen. They also won’t say they did happen, but viewers can take from that what they will.
Here’s what definitely did happen, in the end: Vic moved to D.C., and Travis surprised everyone by joining her. Ben, the forever job hopper, decided to go back to finish his surgical residency (hello, Season 21 of “Grey’s Anatomy”?). A few years later, Maya became captain of Station 19, where Prue was eventually a new probie — and Andy had been promoted to fire chief.
Below, Paige and Clack get into the details of the final episode ever of “Station 19.”
So Andy and Jack. They made out in Andy’s hallucination, but then can you say if they’re back together in real life?
Zoanne Clack: I feel like the flash forwards are possibilities. They’re a future that could happen, given a certain path. So we chose the path that [Andy and Jack] find their way back to each other. But who knows what would have happened in Season 8?
So those flash forwards are all what could have happened in the future, not what actually did happen necessarily?
Clack: We were trying to say that when they’re in their stress period — what they want in that moment to happen in their futures. It’s a possibility that they feel like is something that they’re striving for.
Peter Paige: It’s what they’re fighting for, what’s keeping them alive.
What was your overall vision for the finale? How did you decide how to balance looking toward the future with fighting this wildfire in the present?
Paige: We talked about it a lot.
Clack: We loved the concept of the wildfire, and them really fighting hard and showing them doing their jobs in these final episodes. The wildfire that Peter pitched at the beginning of the season seemed to be the perfect way to show them actually fire-fighting. Then when we heard we were not coming back, we tried to imagine what we’d want to see, and where we’d want them to land in a beautiful world.
This is the beautiful world that we wanted to set up, to go further than just “Station 19,” to take out into the world. What do we want to put out there? I watched a lot of series finales, and took things that I really loved, and I really didn’t want everything to be at the end. I really wanted it to be throughout [the episode], and then we came up with this idea that when they’re super stressed or about to lose their lives, what are they hoping for? What are they envisioning? That’s how it all came about.
Paige: I think when the show got canceled, we talked a lot about its impact and its legacy and what it meant, and one of the things that I think we at least thematically wanted to reinforce is the idea that Station 19 doesn’t end. It’s a philosophy. It’s a way of looking at the world. It’s a way of showing up for people, being of service. We want our fans to take that into their lives. We want our fans to carry those themes and messages that are so important to them, that make the show resonate for them, into the real world and activate them. That was, I think, a big part of how we structured the end of the show.
Clack: And then there’s that last song, with Peter’s devastating last shot over [new Ingrid Michaelson song] “It Never Ends.”
The wildfire was the plan regardless of the show ending, right?
Paige: Correct.
So then can you talk about what other moments you felt like you had to hit in a series finale? I personally was very excited to see Carina suit up.
Clack: That was one of the ones we wanted to hit! Had we gotten a Season 8, we were going to try to integrate her more into the fire time, so that moment was going to happen in Episode 7 or 8. But then when we knew it was the end, we just wanted to make sure we got her out there fighting with the rest of the firefighters. So that was a big moment. We just really wanted to hit every character, and where they were going to land. We brought all of the regular actors in to talk with them about where they felt their character would go, since they’ve been living with them for seven seasons. Amazingly, we had already thought of a lot of the things that they were talking about, but there were some gems we took. We just really wanted to go full circle.
Can you talk about the final moments with Andy as Battalion Chief, walking out of the station — at what point did that become your ending?
Clack: We went back and forth a lot [on the final moment], and I guess we ended up compromising. I had this feeling that I really wanted to see the firehouse empty with the lights turned off, kind of like Norman Lear. Peter was really fighting for [something that showed] that they live on and they move on. We both wanted her to be Chief, because it felt like the culmination of her journey. She’s taken this captain journey all through this season, and she’s gonna keep going. She’s gonna keep fighting both fires and for this career longevity, so we merged all those together and we’re able to have that beautiful walk out into the sunlight moment.
And she gets together with Jack? I know people were a little sad that Jack was gone most of this season after having his dreams ripped away.
Paige: That was one of the reasons we did that. That’s a story we wanted to explore, that isn’t talked about on these shows very often. It’s not a forever career, and it is a career of passion. People talk about it with ballerinas all the time, but firefighters have it too. There is a short shelf life for many firefighters, and I thought it was really important to look at: How does that happen? What happens to them, how do they emotionally get through that? That was what we were trying to do with Jack this season.
And when Jaina came to us, we were talking about her professional endings, and then we started talking about personal ones. She was like, “I mean…Jack?” And we were like, “Jack!” And when we figured that out, we were like “Oh, that’s pretty satisfying.” And when we figured out how to go back in time, that is one of the most creatively fulfilling moments of my career. Zo and I were bouncing ideas back and forth, and one person will go, “Oh, this!” And the other one will say, “Oh, this!” I was like, OK, let me go watch the footage and see if we can actually shoot this, and we broke it down. I just think it’s so thrilling and satisfying and I believe that moment is Andy figuring out it’s always been Jack, and then them holding hands and him saying she’ll never be alone. Even her just saying Jack’s chili is better than Dean’s. You only say that if you’re in love.
That was a brave comment, especially to Vic.
Clack: Half the writers really wanted it, and at first, we were like, “Are we sure?” We really went through a lot of [ideas], and Andy’s [story] was a little bit harder because we knew we wanted her to be Chief, and that was gonna be the last moment. So we didn’t want that to be in her flashforward, and we also wanted to have something for Jack.
We tried to put in some other things for Jack, like we really wanted him to have a foster care center. But we felt like it was so fulfilling for him to have his flashforward with Andy.
Any other moments you were particularly fond of, aside from two different Andy and Jack makeout scenes?
Clack: Yeah, it’s funny because two of the things that I think were the most creative we thought of late in the game, because we just wanted [the finale] to be richer, fuller. Like the Dean scene.
Paige: We went back and forth and back and forth about Vic’s flashforward, like what’s worthy of her journey? Was it a Ripley thing? That, to me, would have felt like she was stuck and looking backwards, not looking forwards, whereas Dean still had this rich emotional life and it felt like moving her toward her goals.
I also want to say Travis showing up at the airport is probably my favorite cinematic romcom moment in my whole career, and I’ve done quite a few of them.
You put a lot of people in danger in these final episodes but no one died.
Paige: Kate died!
OK, aside from Kate, no one died. Was there ever a discussion of losing someone? This is a Shondaland show, after all.
Paige: Oh my God, yeah. A million. My God, the conversations, the arguments, the back and forth. There were a lot of people in jeopardy for various periods of time — just not the gays. Did anybody ever really think we were gonna bury our gays? Have they ever read an interview with Peter Paige or watched a Peter Paige production?
Listen, you got that tension in there. As soon as Carina found out she was pregnant, I was like, oh no, Maya is in danger.
Paige: When we found that cover of “Oh What a Wonderful World,” it was like oh yeah, this is increasing the tension tenfold because the song is so beautiful and simple. Maya’s gonna die in that fire for sure!
Clack: I just couldn’t [kill anyone], in my heart and my soul. I couldn’t let it end like that. I mean, we toyed with it. I put it in for a little while, but I just couldn’t. I didn’t want all the grief that comes with losing a comrade, and we’ve been through it a lot of times on this show. Ultimately, I just wanted them to have an ending without the grief.
You both only got to run the show for a season, but it was a heck of a season. What will you take away from this show?
Paige: Look, this has been an extraordinary privilege. Am I bummed that it was only 10 episodes? Yeah, of course I am. But I’m incredibly proud of what the team has done creatively. I think we landed the plane really well, and there is a privilege with getting to do what you know is the last season, because in television, people have to evolve incrementally, right? You can’t fix them because you have to do another episode next week and they still gotta have stuff to learn and challenges to overcome.
But when you’re in the last season, you can start to reap the fruits of those labors, so that was really satisfying and really fun. We got to do all these things that were the culmination of [the series]. I’m also deeply, deeply proud. Zoanne and I set a couple goals for ourselves when we took over the show, and a big one was culture, and and we have gotten such extraordinary feedback from the cast and crew about the culture of the show this year and about how seen and heard and validated and how much ownership people felt to the show, and how you know how much a part of the team that they felt like they were. To me, that is every bit as important a win as telling really great stories, which I’m also proud to say — not a stinker in the bunch, either.
Clack: Creatively, I thought it was beautifully done with the very small episodes connected with the big episodes, which really helped to delve into these characters and their journeys and really get to know them as people, which I thought was kind of a beautiful, creative thing that Peter and I both wanted to do, and something that I would like to take forward. I feel like having these bottle episodes is, like, economically cautious, but also just beautiful.
They can be wonderful storytelling, And like you said, the culture that was created was so beautiful. We had a “no yelling” policy. It was not toxic in any way. Everyone felt a piece of it, felt ownership, felt like they were heard and that was super, super important. I just was so so proud of having this non toxic, beautiful working environment that I will really, really miss.
