9-1-1 season 10 premiere: sinkhole turns volcano as Athena starts detective work

Centre · 2ABC's 9-1-1 returned for its tenth season with the premiere "That Sinking Feeling", which airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC. 1 2 Centre · 2The episode opens with several groups of people on the road during what first looks like a sinkhole collapse in downtown LA; Collider reports that every member of the 118 gets a moment to save someone and everyone affected survives. 1 2 Centre · 2Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt), still running dispatch while Sue recovers from a stroke, attends her first post-mortem review, led by Ty Worrell (Rob Huebel) of the Office of Emergency Management. She audits calls in the area and finds a 20% uptake in calls in the two days before the sinkhole, plus a pattern of strange incidents, including an aquarium worker burned by unusually acidic water. 1 2

Centre · 1Worrell dismisses Maddie's concern at first, but the next day he calls her about a strange noise from the growing sinkhole. The 118 saves everyone, and then the sinkhole erupts with lava, revealing a volcano, according to Collider. 1 Centre · 2In a parallel plot, Athena (Angela Bassett), now a detective, takes on the case of an unconscious man with severe burns, with a ring as his only possession, and works with new partner Detective Jace Newell (Rick Otto). His coworkers at a construction company say it was a workplace injury and Newell urges her to drop it, but Athena keeps investigating alone. 1 2 Centre · 2Her inquiry leads to a jewelry store whose safe was robbed through a tunnel. She goes inside and is trapped underground when the volcano erupts, which both outlets describe as a cliffhanger, with Collider saying it sets up next episode's opening emergency. 1 2

Centre · 1Athena also tells May that she doubts she can be a detective and wonders whether she was promoted only because she was shot on the job. May (Corinne Massiah) has a new job at the hospital, which Collider says broadens the show's focus. 1 Centre · 2On the personal side, Buck (Oliver Stark) has been fostering Theo since last season's finale. He keeps getting hurt when Theo plays too rough, and Eddie (Ryan Guzman) worries that Buck does not discipline Theo. A dinner at the Diaz house, where Theo knocks a crutch out from under Christopher, ends without a fight or a resolution. 1 2 Centre · 1Screen Rant adds context: the show has felt different since Bobby Nash (Peter Krause) was killed off at the end of season 8, and Chimney (Kenneth Choi) is now the newest leader of station 118. It notes that, despite promotion that presented the volcano as the opening emergency, the premiere instead sets up two mysteries that collide. Open questions it lists include why the construction workers robbed the jeweler and why they gave Athena a false confession. 2