‘9-1-1’ Officially Calls Back to One of Buck’s Strongest Episodes

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Oliver Stark as Buck in 9-1-1 Season 9, Episode 15

Published Oct 20, 2026, 8:36 AM EDT

Jennie Richardson is a TV Features and Lists Writer for Collider, and a graduate student pursuing an MFA in Fiction Writing. In other words, she really loves stories.

9-1-1 has now officially kicked off its tenth season, and the hit procedural hasn't wasted any time jumping back into the action, with the first responders dealing with a volcano suddenly erupting in LA. All the while, outside of this disaster, many of the main characters are dealing with major changes of their own. Athena (Angela Bassett), Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt), and May (Corinne Massiah) are all still getting used to their new jobs, while Buck (Oliver Stark) has fully committed to raising his biological son and now-foster child, Theo (Lincoln and Theodore Sykes).

As of the start of the season, Theo has been living with Buck for three months now, and he seems happy. The only problem is, Buck doesn't know how to discipline Theo, nor does he even make an effort to do so. In the Season 10 premiere of 9-1-1, Eddie (Ryan Guzman) picks up on the ways in which Buck's leniency is hurting Buck, Theo, and the people around them. It's a compelling storyline on its own, but most of all, this is an important callback to Buck's painful childhood as detailed in Season 4's "Buck Begins."

Buck's Parenting Storyline in '9-1-1' Season 10 Ties Back to His Own Childhood

When Buck crossed paths again with Connor (Colin McCalla) and Kameron (Chelsea Kane) last season, the two of them immediately started blaming him for Theo's behavioral issues, believing it to be genetic. Like Theo, Buck acted out quite a bit as a child, and he was always getting injured. There are separate reasons to believe that Buck and Theo could both have ADHD, but this particular aspect of Buck's childhood was due to his parents' neglect. "Buck Begins" revealed that Maddie wasn't always the oldest Buckley child. She and Buck had an older brother named Daniel who had Leukemia, and Buck was conceived intentionally to be a bone marrow donor for his brother. After a baby Buck was made to donate his bone marrow to Daniel, the procedure didn't take, and Daniel died.

Collider Exclusive · TV Medicine Quiz Which Fictional Hospital Would You Work Best In? The Pitt · ER · Grey's Anatomy · House · Scrubs

Five hospitals. Five completely different ways medicine goes sideways on television — brutal, chaotic, romantic, brilliant, and ridiculous. Only one of them is the ward your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out exactly where you belong.

🚨The Pitt

🏥ER

💉Grey's

🔬House

🩺Scrubs

FIND YOUR HOSPITAL →

A critical patient comes through the door. What's your first instinct? Medicine under pressure reveals who you actually are.

AStay completely present — block everything else out and work through it step by step, right now. BTriage fast and delegate — get the right people on the right problems immediately. CTrust my gut and move — I work best when I stop overthinking and just act. DAsk the question everyone else is ignoring — what's the thing that doesn't fit? ETake a breath, make a joke to cut the tension, and then get to work — panic helps no one.

NEXT QUESTION →

Why did you go into medicine in the first place? The honest answer says more about you than the one you'd give in an interview.

ABecause I wanted to be where it matters most — right at the edge, when someone's life is actually on the line. BBecause I wanted to help people — genuinely, one patient at a time, in a system that makes it hard. CBecause I was drawn to the intensity of it — the stakes, the drama, the feeling of being fully alive. DBecause medicine is the most interesting puzzle there is — and I needed a problem worth solving. EBecause I wanted to make a difference — and also, honestly, I didn't know what else to do with my life.

NEXT QUESTION →

What do you actually want from the people you work with? Who you want beside you under pressure is who you are.

ACompetence and calm — I need people who don't fall apart when things get bad. BTrust and reliability — I want to know that when I pass something off, it's handled. CConnection — I want colleagues who become family, even if that gets complicated. DIntelligence and the willingness to be challenged — I have no interest in people who just agree with me. EFriendship — people I actually like spending twelve hours a day with, because those hours are going to happen either way.

NEXT QUESTION →

You lose a patient you fought hard to save. How do you carry it? Every doctor who's worked a long shift has had to answer this question.

AI carry it. All of it. I don't look for ways to put it down — that weight is part of doing this work honestly. BI process it and move — you have to, or the next patient suffers for the one you just lost. CI feel it deeply and lean on the people around me — I don't think you're supposed to handle that alone. DI go back over every decision — not to punish myself, but because I need to understand what I missed. EI grieve it genuinely, find some way to laugh about something unrelated, and try to be kind to myself — imperfectly.

NEXT QUESTION →

How would your colleagues describe the way you work? Your reputation on the floor is usually more accurate than your self-image.

AIntense and completely present — no small talk during a shift, but exactly who you want there. BSteady and dependable — not the flashiest in the room but never the one who drops something. CPassionate and occasionally chaotic — brilliant on the hard cases, prone to drama everywhere else. DBrilliant and difficult — right more often than anyone else, and everyone knows it, including me. EWarm and self-deprecating — not the most intimidating presence, but genuinely good at this and easy to like.

NEXT QUESTION →

How do you feel about hospital protocol and procedure? Every institution has rules. What you do with them is a choice.

AProtocol is the floor, not the ceiling — I follow it until the patient needs something it can't provide. BI respect it — the system is broken in places, but the structure is there for a reason and I work within it. CI follow it until my instincts tell me not to — and my instincts are usually right, even when they cause problems. DRules are for people who haven't thought hard enough about when to break them. EI try to follow it and mostly do — with a few memorable exceptions that still come up in meetings.

NEXT QUESTION →

What does this job cost you personally? Nobody works in medicine without paying a price. What's yours?

AEverything outside these walls — I've given this job my full attention and the rest of my life has gone around it. BMy idealism, mostly — I came in believing the system could be fixed and I've made a complicated peace with that. CStability — my personal life has been as chaotic as the OR, and that's not entirely a coincidence. DMy relationships — I am not easy to know, and the people who've tried to would probably agree. EMy sense of gravity — I use humour as a coping mechanism, which not everyone appreciates in a hospital.

NEXT QUESTION →

At the end of a long shift, what keeps you coming back? The answer to this question is the most honest thing about you.

AThe fact that it's real — that nothing else I could be doing would matter this much, right now, today. BThe patients — individual human beings who needed something and got it because I was there. CThe people I work with — I have walked through impossible things with these people and I'd do it again. DThe next unsolved case — there's always another puzzle, and I'm not done yet. EBecause despite everything — the exhaustion, the loss, the absurdity — I actually love this job.

REVEAL MY HOSPITAL →

Your Assignment Has Been Made You Belong In…

Your answers have pointed to one fictional hospital above all others. This is the ward your instincts, your temperament, and your particular brand of dysfunction were built for.

The Pitt

You are built for the most unsparing version of emergency medicine television has ever shown — one that puts you inside a single fifteen-hour shift and doesn't let you look away.

You need your work to be real, not romanticised — meaning over drama, honesty over aesthetics.
You find purpose inside the work itself, not in the chaos surrounding it.
You've made peace with the fact that this job takes from you constantly, and gives back in ways that are harder to name.
Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center demands exactly that kind of person — and you would not want to be anywhere else.

You are the person who keeps the whole floor running — not the most brilliant in the room, but possibly the most essential.

You show up, do the work, absorb the losses, and come back the next day without needing the job to be anything other than what it is.
You care about patients as individual human beings, not as cases to solve or dramas to live through.
You believe in the system even when it fails you — and you understand that emergency medicine is about holding the line just long enough.
ER is television about endurance. You have it.

Grey's Anatomy

You came to medicine with your whole self — your ambition, your emotions, your relationships, your history — and you have never quite managed to leave any of it at the door.

You feel things fully and form deep attachments to the people you work with.
Your personal and professional lives are permanently, chaotically entangled — and that entanglement drives both your greatest disasters and your most remarkable saves.
You understand that extraordinary medicine often happens at the intersection of clinical skill and profound human connection.
It's messy at Grey Sloan. You would not have it any other way.

House

You are drawn to the problem above everything else — the symptom that doesn't fit, the diagnosis hiding underneath the obvious one.

You're not primarily motivated by the patient as a person — though you are capable of caring, even if you'd deny it.
You work best when the stakes are highest and the standard answer is wrong.
Princeton-Plainsboro exists to house one extraordinary, impossible mind — and everyone around that mind is there because they're smart enough to keep up.
The only way forward here is to think harder than everyone else in the room. That is exactly what you do.

Scrubs

You understand that medicine is tragic and absurd in almost equal measure — and that the only sane response is to hold both of those things at the same time.

You are warm, self-aware, and funnier than most people in your field.
You use humour to get through terrible moments — and at Sacred Heart, that's not a flaw, it's a survival strategy.
You lean on the people around you and let them lean back. The laughter and the grief are genuinely inseparable here.
Scrubs is a show about learning to become someone worthy of the job. You are still very much in the middle of that process — which is exactly right.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

Bogged down by grief, Margaret (Dee Wallace) and Phillip Buckley (Gregory Harrison) failed to properly parent Buck. Maddie stepped up in their place, but Buck still played rough and engaged in risky behaviors frequently, unintentionally getting injured all the time so that his parents would finally pay attention to him. Both Daniel's existence and the reason for Buck's conception were kept from him for his whole life, until he learned the truth in Season 4. Confronting his parents, Buck said, "I have walked through fire every single day of my life because of you... because nothing I ever did was good enough!" Buck has since come to terms with his upbringing, and he has a solid but distant relationship with his parents and embraces the 118 as his true family. Now, though, Buck's childhood is impacting his own parenting.

Buck's Lenient Parenting in '9-1-1' Season 10 Comes From a Painful Place

In the 9-1-1 Season 10 premiere, it is revealed that Theo has hurt Buck badly enough to send him to the hospital five times in the last three months, just from playing too rough. Later, while Buck and Theo are over at Eddie's house for dinner, Theo accidentally knocks one of Christopher's (Gavin McHugh) crutches out from under him. Theo apologizes right away, but it's just the latest in a pattern of behavior that will only get worse unless Buck disciplines him. Unlike Buck's parents, his inability to give Theo structure and rules doesn't come from a place of neglect. Buck is taking care of a child who has just lost both of his parents, and he wants to give him everything. Additionally, Buck was always treated like he didn't matter and wasn't wanted as a child, so he's going out of his way to make sure that Theo knows that he does matter and is wanted.

As such, in order to truly step up as a parent for Theo, Buck needs to work through his lingering issues from his childhood. Eddie is already in the perfect position to say something to Buck and encourage him to start implementing rules and discipline for Theo, so long as Buck is receptive to it. Beyond that, though, Buck needs to learn that telling Theo "no" sometimes doesn't mean that Theo will be made to feel the same lack of worth that Buck did as a child. By making Buck a parent, 9-1-1 once again has the opportunity to touch back on the complicated dynamics from the Buckley siblings' childhood, just like it did during Maddie's first pregnancy in Season 4.

9-1-1 airs Thursdays at 8:00 P.M. EST on ABC.