‘9-1-1: Nashville’ Midseason Finale Ends in Serious Cliffhanger

The first half of *9-1-1: Nashville*’s debut season ended on a pretty serious cliffhanger. In Thursday’s midseason finale, the Music City was hit with a surprise all too familiar to *9-1-1* fans.

The final minutes of the episode showed computers getting locked up and greeted with an eerie skull and crossbones. Phones were also being locked and sending message after message about natural disasters, such as wildfires and tornadoes, that weren’t actually happening. Tornado sirens blared on a beautiful sunny day, adding to the chaos.

After warning people, “Prepare to be boarded,” a six-hour timer appeared on the computers, along with the chilling message: “Drill time is over. Deposit $10 million or Nashville gets bloody.”

Even though there wasn’t much time left in the episode when the hackers sent the city into turmoil, it still caused some damage. For instance, Jessica Capshaw’s character, Blythe, was riding her horse during the alerts. When the tornado siren went off, her horse got spooked, causing her to fall and land on a barbed wire fence.

The episode’s final shot showed a paddle-wheel steamboat seemingly heading straight into danger as a passenger screamed, “Oh, God, we’re all gonna die!” Everyone on board was wearing life jackets and huddled together, with the boat heading toward a bridge pillar.

If this hacker storyline and the numerous emergency alerts sound familiar, that’s because they are. *9-1-1* opened its fifth season with the exact same plot. Fans will remember that after the chaos, including a citywide blackout, the hackers were never caught.

*Nashville* showrunner Rashad Raisani confirmed to TV Insider that the hackers are indeed the same ones from *9-1-1*.

“The origin of the hack is one of the things that I always felt was *9-1-1*,” Raisani explained. “There was a hacker attack in Season 5, but we never caught the hackers. They just disappeared into the night, so it’s always kind of been in my craw a little bit — like, if you do something on that scale and get away with it, you’re going to do it again.”

Raisani continued, “Then I thought, well, now these people have had three years to raise their game, and they can make a lot more money if they force the issue. I always also regretted that we never had them attack Austin on *9-1-1: Lone Star*. We ran out of episodes before we could do it. So, *Nashville*, we thought, OK, let’s have ’em do that.”

He further shared a personal connection to the storyline. “My dad was a doctor, and his hospital was hacked. They couldn’t perform any medical procedures, access medications, or retrieve records. They just paralyzed the hospital for a month for ransom.”

“We just kept picturing — what if you had access to all of the traffic systems, the water filtration system, the airport, and more? The amount of calamities you could create intentionally is crazy, and unintentionally is even crazier,” Raisani added. “So, we let our imaginations run wild about if we could just wave a wand and shut something down, what would it be, and what would be the scariest thing to happen?”

He concluded, “Hopefully, we come up with some disasters that you may not see coming and some that you might see coming because you’re like, ‘Well, that would be bad.’ And of course, we want to do it.”
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