Did Buck hook up with Dixie?! Plus, “9-1-1”'s Oliver Stark and Ryan Guzman tease Buddie's road trip 'thriller'
Did Buck hook up with Dixie?! Plus, “9-1-1”'s Oliver Stark and Ryan Guzman tease Buddie's road trip 'thriller'
Patrick GomezFri, March 6, 2026 at 3:00 AM UTC
0
Dixie (LeAnn Rimes) and Buck (Oliver Stark) on '9-1-1: Nashville'Credit: Jake Giles Netter/Disney
This article contains spoilers for 9-1-1: Nashville season 1, episode 12, titled "Spirit of the Games."
Key Points -
9-1-1 characters Buck (Oliver Stark) and Eddie (Ryan Guzman) headed to Tennessee for a 9-1-1: Nashville crossover episode.
The episode ended with sparks flying between Buck and Dixie (LeAnn Rimes).
Next week's 9-1-1 will see Buddie on a road trip that showrunner Tim Minear says turns into a "thriller" with "lasting effects."
Tornadoes, fire, fire tornadoes.... The possibilities presented by combining the worlds of 9-1-1 and 9-1-1: Nashville are practically infinite. But there's one thing the Nashville writers instantly knew they wanted to do when welcoming 9-1-1's Buck (Oliver Stark) and Eddie (Ryan Guzman) to Tennessee for Thursday's crossover episode.
"Well," 9-1-1 Nashville showrunner Rashad Raisani tells Entertainment Weekly with a grin, “the first idea that one of the writers pitched was, 'I think that Dixie should hook up with Buck.' And I just thought, 'Well, that's a winner.'"
Raisani wasn't exactly sure where in the episode that connection between Stark's Los Angeles firefighter and LeAnn Rimes' country singer would take place (During the Firefighter Games? His first night out in Nashville?) but ultimately the team landed on Buck and Dixie ending up next to each other at a bar at the end of the episode.
"So, uh, what's your name, cowboy?" Dixie asks Buck, having previously ogled the shirtless firefighter during the Firefighter Games.
The episode ends there, leaving audiences with two likely questions: 1. Where did Buck get that disco cowboy hat? and 2. Did Buck and Dixie actually hook up?
To answer the less important question, Raisani says pairing Buck with Dixie wasn’t just about shock value — it was about energy. "We just always wanted to show off Dixie’s… she’s not to be underestimated in any circumstance," he says. "So she’ll be there to hook up with the hunk at the end."
Okay, but that still doesn't answer the question. So we went to Tim Minear, who co-created 9-1-1: Nashville with Raisani and serves as co-creator and showrunner of 9-1-1.
"Did they get together?" Minear replies coyly when asked a question that assumes Dixie and Buck went home together. Regardless, he loved the idea of throwing one of the franchise’s most endearing firefighters into Dixie's sights: "Obviously, any chance to put any of the characters in a scene with LeAnn Rimes is going to be a plus."
Advertisement
If sparks did continue to fly, Buck and Eddie will have plenty of time to talk about it, as the two will head out on what Minear describes as a "road trip…dare I say, thriller."
Eddie (Ryan Guzman) and Buck (Oliver Stark) on '9-1-1: Nashville'Credit: Jake Giles Netter/Disney
Yes, next week's 9-1-1 will see the friends journeying back from Nashville — and it’s not exactly a smooth ride.
"It really felt like we were making a different show almost for a couple of weeks," Stark says. "The tone is very different. The look of the show is very different. It was just a really enjoyable, refreshing experience."
The ninth season's 13th episode was largely on location, with the cast and crew staying in a hotel and working away from their usual sets — a shift that Stark says added to the cinematic feel. "It not only felt different to make it, but it feels different to watch it," he says. "It takes the show in a new direction. Once you’ve got almost 150 episodes, it’s fun to branch out and do these little odd bottle episodes here and there."
"It's still very tied to 9-1-1, but it does feel like its own thing," adds Guzman. "The way it was shot, the coloring — everything is a little darker. But it always has to have some levity. It's 9-1-1 at the end of the day."
Get your daily dose of entertainment news, celebrity updates, and what to watch with our EW Dispatch newsletter.
For fans invested in Buck and Eddie’s dynamic — a relationship that’s weathered grief, career shifts, and deeply personal reckonings — the road trip promises to put them under pressure in a new way.
"There will be some lasting effects from their sojourn to Nashville when we get back," Minear teases.
As Guzman said: It is 9-1-1 at the end of the day.
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
