SPOILER ALERT: The following reveals plot points from ABC’s Station 19 Season 6 premiere titled “Twist and Shout.”
ABC’s Station 19 returned with its Season 6 premiere tonight and the timeline picks up 6 months after the events of last season’s finale. The first thing to jump out at viewers is Andy’s (Jaine Lee Ortiz) return to her OG firehouse following the closure of Station 23 last season.
In order for Andy to fill a spot at Station 19, someone would have to vacate. It’s later revealed Jack (Grey Damon) has left his position to deal with his family struggles, leaving things wide open for Andy.
Fans were convinced Jack may not even return for the new season but he’s very much back. Unfortunately, he’s on a downward spiral after the pain of reconnecting with his brother and all the conflicting feelings that come with that.
Elsewhere, Travis (Jay Hayden) is suited up in an actual suit this time to campaign for mayor in his attempt to keep Dixon (Pat Healy) from taking the office. At the same time, the rest of the team is tackling a call to help a woman involved in an accident.
Saving her becomes a bigger challenge when rain and winds batter the city and it soon becomes clear that a tornado is swirling its way toward them. Travis and Dixon are also affected as they entertained potential voters outdoors.
Just as the weather begins to clear, Andy, Beckett (Josh Randall), and Sullivan (Boris Kodjoe) make their way back to the injured driver in a yellow Mini Cooper but she’s gone. With extensive injuries, there’s no way she could’ve driven off.
She reappears before Travis after she was transported over by the tornado. Keeping a cool head, he takes charge of her rescue. Dixon is losing his mind over how it’s all playing out and accuses Travis of making himself a hero to win votes as the crowd cheers for him and records it all for social media. Thus, a new #FireDaddy was crowned.
Sullivan has an intense chat with Maya (Danielle Savre) in the fire truck heading to the next emergency about the repercussions she’s faced since attempting to blackmail the new chief (Merle Dandridge). But she is unwavering in that she was simply being ambitious when she threatened to expose an alleged affair between the chief and Sullivan in exchange for a promotion. Sullivan lays out all the cards for Maya so she can better understand where she went wrong, and she finally sees the error of her ways.
When Sullivan, Maya, and the rest of the team arrive at a new call, they are met by someone from their past—Eva Vasquez (Kelly Thiebaud) who needs help saving Jack who is confined to her bed in handcuffs after a tree came through her window during the tornado. Wild.
When Jack is confronted by Andy, who he told he was on the road to reconnecting with his foster sister in Kansas City and not with Eva, it’s not pretty. Maya is especially disappointed in Jack because he had agreed to be her and her wife Carina’s (Stefania Spampinato) sperm donor and now will have to make a Plan B for conception.
Although, after Carina finds out all that Maya has been hiding, who knows what the future holds?
With a little insight into that is executive producer Krista Vernoff who teases what’s ahead in Season 6.
DEADLINE: The premiere picks up six months after last season’s finale. Will we learn what happened during that time at any point?
KRISTA VERNOFF: There are little pieces of dialogue throughout the season that talk about what happened in the interim, but we had to just take that leap forward because we try to keep Station on the same timeline as Grey’s Anatomy. It’s just one of those leaps that we hope the viewers will take, and I’m sure there will always be questions from our passionate viewers as to what happened in those six months. But I don’t know that we’re providing a lot of answers.
DEADLINE: Those passionate viewers were worried Jack wasn’t coming back but he did and in a big way. It feels like he’s back to rock bottom. What are your plans for him?
KV: One of our favorite things to do always at Shondaland is to look at what happens to people when they go to their darkest versions of themselves— when they, as you say, hit rock bottom. When people were speculating if he was going to come back, I was like, ‘Oh god, that’s like our favorite story.’ But we are not racing to his return to the station, because he’s in a profound amount of pain and he’s comforting himself through that pain in a really disruptive way. And helping him return to someone capable of functioning in a work environment is going to take some time.
DEADLINE: By the end of the episode, we see Andy has decided whether Jack wants her help or not, she’s going to give it to him. What can we expect from Andy, who is also trying to focus on climbing the ranks at work?
KV: It’s interesting, Andy was really someone who needed some help in the last couple of years. Yes, she is a person who tries to help others but really, she’s been someone who was struggling. She went through so many deaths and losses in the last couple of years, and then the assault story from last season. One of the things that we talked about for Andy was that on the other side of all of that, we felt like she’s healed a lot. She’s recovered a lot in these six months and she’s become someone who is a real leader in the house. And yes, some of that is trying to help get Jack back home and trying to be a part of the solution, rather than being a part of the drama. She’s showing herself as a potential leader in that way and we’re loving Jaina’s return to a lighter state of being this season.
DEADLINE: Maya is also struggling with all that’s on her plate. What can you tease about her journey this season?
KV: Maya is having one of those moments in life where all of the pain and trauma and abuse that you survived comes back to the surface. Maya is a person who was raised to win and all of her self-esteem is wrapped up in that. And while she’s done some unpacking of it, people who survived the kind of abuse that was a part of her daily life as a child, always have more work to do. Maya has more work to do on this front and it’s a painful thing to watch someone sort of self-destructing. We saw the beginning of that self-destruct when she blackmailed Chief Ross last season. It’s gonna be hard on Maya fans who want her to just be happy because she’s got a journey to take.
DEADLINE: I’m still shipping Andy and Sullivan but what’s in store for him and the chief?
KV: Oh, interesting. Here’s what I’ll say. The ease of reconnection that Sullivan felt with Natasha was absolutely broken by Maya’s threat. And that’s what you’re seeing in the premiere, is the impact on other people for what Maya did. And more will be explored and more will be revealed.
DEADLINE: We all hate Dixon and don’t want him to become mayor. Does Travis have a real shot and if so, could that mean seeing less of him in the future?
KV: Here’s something to remember: Travis did not set out to win the mayoral race. He probably set out to make sure Dixon loses. So it doesn’t mean you’ll see less of Travis, it means that Travis is challenged in new ways because he has no idea what he’s bitten off when he throws his hat into this into the Seattle mayoral race. That’s a huge beast of a thing he’s taken on and success doesn’t mean he becomes mayor and leaves the firehouse. Success would mean that he gets enough votes to make sure Dixon loses.
DEADLINE: Nobody wants to see Dixon get all that power! He is the guy you love to hate.
KV: That’s right. You need characters that you love to hate on TV; you can’t love everybody. We need people for all our progressive, wonderful, loving, firefighters to push against.
Station 19 airs Thursday nights at 8 p.m.