Spoiler alert! This story contains spoilers for the April 18 episode of 9-1-1: Lone Star, “Open.”
Someone in the world of 9-1-1: Lone Star needs to hog-tie Owen Strand, or at least start a petition to ban him from dating, because nothing good ever seems to happen when he’s involved with a woman. We knew things were going to get complicated for the 126 captain, when he and billionaire heiress Kendra Harrington got hot and heavy pretty quickly earlier this season. However, we never could have predicted what was coming in “Open,” which included a big revelation about Kendra, a horrifying death and lots of trouble ahead for Owen.
It was more hilariously uncomfortable than surprising when Kendra (Michaela McManus) revealed to Owen (Rob Lowe) that she was actually married and in an open relationship with husband Brett Collier (Clarke Thorell). Owen vowed to never grace the Harrington doorstep ever again, but that was before we learned just how accident prone Brett was. The 126 was dispatched to Kendra’s house just an hour later, when Brett’s arm was crushed while trying to rotate Kendra’s tires (not a euphemism).
When Owen saw that there was clearly love between the spouses, he ended things with Kendra, which caused an argument between her and her husband, just as he was preparing to “get his cryo on” in his cryotherapy machine. Kendra left for a run, and we saw the machine inexplicably drop from 32 degrees down to 0, and after another 45 minutes the firefighters made yet another trip to the billionaires’ home.
That’s when things started to get really tricky. Owen pulled a frozen solid Brett out of the machine, felt that he had no pulse and immediately started CPR. Brett’s chest cracked like thin ice and CAVED IN, and, well, let’s just say Kendra’s husband was no longer an issue standing between her and Owen.
One has to wonder: Wouldn’t Owen know that doing chest compressions on a frozen body wasn’t a good idea? I’m not suggesting any ill intent on the fire captain’s part, but even I started to protest to my screen in the split second before Brett’s chest exploded (and then I screamed).
The plot thickened at the end of the episode, when Owen got a call from Gabriel Reyes (Benito Martinez) of the non-baseball Texas Rangers to inform him that the autopsy had revealed Brett had been poisoned before he froze. This obviously puts some big question marks hanging over Kendra’s head, and Owen doesn’t exactly look super innocent either, given their “very modern and evolved” situationship. In fact, things look pretty dire for the captain in the preview for next week’s episode, “Tongues Out”:
I thought Kendra seemed pretty innocent in “Open,” but next week’s episode might paint a different picture. Would anything truly surprise Owen at this point? This season he already lost a potential love interest, when FBI agent Rose Casey was killed in explosion, and in Season 3 he came face to face with serial killer Sadie (who spiked T.K.’s pho with Oxycontin, rather than poisoning Owen’s gin, as the preview suggests might happen).
Tune in to see how this plays out, when 9-1-1: Lone Star returns at 8 p.m. ET Thursday, April 25, on Fox, and you can catch up on previous episodes with a Hulu subscription. Be sure to also check out our 2023 TV schedule to see what other shows are coming soon.
