9-1-1 and 9-1-1: Nashville are on hiatus, but when they’re back on January 8, 2026, fans of the franchise can look forward to a loose end from the flagship being tied up in Music City. While this doesn’t mean the 118 will be making an appearance just yet, in an interview with TV Insider, showrunner Rashad Raisani teased what viewers can expect from the hacker storyline and provided a status update on the crossover fans are eagerly awaiting.
Key Takeaways
- The 9-1-1 franchise’s history with the hackers taking over Nashville
- Why there wasn’t a true-blue crossover before the hiatus
- Rashad Raisani wants to make crossovers between 9-1-1 and 9-1-1: Nashville a natural occurrence
A Hack Three Years in the Making
Raisani always knew he wanted to return to the hackers who wreaked havoc on LA in 9-1-1 season 5. They got away with it three years ago, and now they’ve launched an even bigger scheme. The showrunner told TV Insider that he’d intended to do a storyline of this scale on 9-1-1: Lone Star, but they couldn’t fit it into the amount of episodes they had to wrap the series. So, to 9-1-1: Nashville has gone the spoils. But he was careful to make clear that this connecting thread doesn’t mean it’s paving the way for a crossover in the midseason premiere.
There is a crossover coming, but it won’t be in this episode, so I don’t want to give people false hope on that. But we definitely talk about L.A. and the L.A. hack and that history. We see some clips from our old show about saying, here, they put giraffes on Hollywood Boulevard. This is the kind of crazy stuff you can expect to happen. So, we are fully aware of our own universe on that, but it won’t be a crossover yet. That will come a little bit later.
Still, the in-universe tie-in is sure to be exciting for fans who’ve been watching the two-hour 9-1-1 block on Thursdays. Call-backs in franchises help to ground shows that share a world into the same history and reality. Not to mention, they’re just plain fun. While Raisani did tease that these hackers have had years to improve their skills, not everything will go to plan. There will be both intentional and unintentional calamities that the 113 and Nashville’s dispatch center will have to deal with throughout the episode.
A 9-1-1 Crossover Is Coming, But It’s a Ways Off
9-1-1 and 9-1-1: Nashville will crossover, it’s just a matter of when and how. Currently, the team behind the newest procedural to join the franchise is hard at work fleshing out the relationships and dynamics. It’s always a challenge bringing in well-known characters into a new environment. The Tennessee crew is getting their sea legs under them, but once that’s finished, there will be room to bring the 118 down south (and some of the Austin team might make an appearance in the future!).
Raisani shared that formal talks on how to make this happen are underway:
We’re kind of figuring out our story, about which story makes the most sense to tell, but we want to make this not just a one-time thing, that we can start to develop a relationship between these casts so that it won’t be always so out of the norm to be able to do it.
They haven’t decided whether the crossover will be a two-episode event or “a more modest” affair. But whatever they choose, it’s certain to be must-watch television. Crossovers are a good time, and the fact that the writing team is trying to establish a way to make them possible more regularly is a decent sign that ABC is in it for the long haul with the 9-1-1 shows.
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