Ronen Rubinstein Teases ‘Jam-Packed’ Final Season of ‘9-1-1: Lone Star’ (Exclusive)

The fifth and final season of 9-1-1: Lone Star will be here on Monday, Sept. 23 and Ronen Rubinstein, who plays paramedic T.K. Strand, spoke to PopCulture.com all about it. After it was announced that the long-awaited Season 5 of the Fox drama would be its last, there was no telling what would go down, especially with only 12 episodes to close it out. With the season kicking off a multi-episode opener involving a train derailment, it will surely be as intense as ever. Plus, with T.K. and Carlos now married and still struggling with obstacles such as Carlos finding his father’s killer, there will be a lot to deal with. Take a look at what Rubinstein had to say about Season 5 of 9-1-1: Lone Star. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

PopCulture: What can you preview for the Season 5 premiere of 9-1-1: Lone Star and the opening emergency? It seems like it’s going to be much bigger than a train derailment.

Ronen Rubinstein: I feel like every single season, I have to talk about how we just keep getting bigger and better, and we somehow manage to top the previous season’s rescues. And this season, we have a three-episode arc for a train derailment. I’m sure that’s been very public now, but there’s a side story with this gas cloud that is so insane and so terrifying. It’s specifically for our T.N.T. crew, the paramedics.

They really face it head on, and it gets really, really, really close to being bad towards the third episode. So you’ll see exactly what I mean by that. The season, just like every season, it’s just the perfect combination of rescues and emergencies, but very much as well as personal emergencies and personal storylines and just continuing to evolve all of our characters and all of our relationships that we’ve just fallen madly in love with these last five years. And I think this season, especially because it’s 12 episodes, I think we were able to jam-pack each episode. So, it’s incredible. I can’t wait for everybody to see it. We only have, what, three days, four days.

PC: Kind of going off of that, something that I’m looking forward to and fans are looking forward to is seeing T.K. and Carlos as newlyweds. Was it different at all playing off that new dynamic between them with Rafael since they are married now?

Rubinstein: No. Not really. I feel like they’ve been, you know, married in many ways. I feel like it was a very smooth, organic transition for the two of them. It’s kinda like a couple that the marriage just feels like something to make it official. But I think, like, emotionally and spiritually, they’ve been there. They’re fully committed to each other. They’re committed to each other’s lives, to each other’s careers. And I think that’s what marriage is in many ways.

It was just adding some new hardware and some nice tax breaks. But now, it was smooth. And, specifically, you know, the issue that we’re gonna face within our marriage right away is very much gonna challenge their unity once again as they love to do every season. But I think Carlos obsessively trying to figure out what happened to his dad, he’s definitely gonna put a very interesting spin on their relationship, and we’ll see how they navigate it. But I think there’s truly nothing these two boys can’t handle, and we’ll very much see their relationship and their communication evolve to its finest that we’ve ever seen.

PC: As you just said, Carlos will be continuing to try to solve his father’s murder. How will that affect T.K.?

Rubinstein: Well, I don’t wanna give too much away, but I think it’s, you know, difficult, especially because we’re jumping to a year ahead. And I think there’s gonna be a very fine line that T.K. is gonna have to walk of being the supportive, loving husband, as well as first responder understanding what his husband’s going through, but then also, you know, being a human being and having needs and wanting his husband to be okay and seeing that he’s really struggling and seeing that he’s not, you know, always in the moment with them. And I think it hurts T.K. to see Carlos suffering. And we’ll see how they how they navigate that. And I’ve been teasing for a while now that Episode 5 actually will shine a light on that, and I think we’ll truly show how special these two are together as a unit. But we’ll have to wait a little bit to get there.

PC: As if that wasn’t enough, it’s been previously revealed that someone from T.K.’s past will be coming into play and shaking things up. What can you tease about that?

Rubinstein: Well, we now know it’s gonna be Jonah, which is something I’ve been hoping and daydreaming about forever since we met Jonah in Season 2, I believe. And also, we’re meeting Enzo, which is something that’s been one of my most anticipated storylines for us to navigate. And what Tim and Rashad create with that dynamic is gonna be legendary. And then Jonah is, I mean, they could not have written that storyline any better. I think everybody will be so happy with where that goes. It will definitely throw another wrench in their relationship. So we kinda have, like, three different acts of what they go through. But, yeah, I think people will be satisfied.

PC: Is there anything else you can tease about the final season of 9-1-1: Lone Star?

Rubinstein: You know, Rafa said it wonderfully at the convention when somebody asked us to summarize the season in three words, and he said happily ever after. And I think we’ll leave it at that.

9-1-1: Lone Star Season 5 premieres on Monday, Sept. 23 at 8 p.m. ET on Fox’s 2024 fall schedule.