After 9-1-1 sealed its 100th episode with a monumental same-sex kiss between Oliver Stark’s Buck and Lou Ferrigno Jr.’s Tommy, Stark responded to fans’ emotional reactions in an Instagram Story.
The actor, who’s starred in all seven seasons of the popular first responder procedural, said he was “humbled and overwhelmed by the positive reaction to Buck’s storyline,” admitting he’s read many fan messages and “I “couldn’t be prouder.”But he also addressed the haters, calling out “the smaller group of people” commenting on his posts about how Buck’s bisexuality has ruined the show.
“I would like you to know that I truly don’t care,” Stark wrote in a Story for his 737,000 Instagram followers. “This is a show about love and inclusion. It’s featured queer relationships from the very beginning, including a beautiful Black lesbian marriage played out by two of the best actresses I’ve ever watched. If one other character finding a new facet to his sexuality and realizing his bisexuality is your deal breaker — I fear you’ve missed the entire point of the show.”
As noted in a previous piece, a number of 9-1-1 fans have been begging writers to explore Buck’s sexuality for years. When fellow 118 firefighter Eddie Diaz (Ryan Guzman) joined the team in Season 2, the “Buddie” ship was born and viewers began rooting for a friends-to-lovers storyline between the two besties.
Over the past seven years, the show dropped subtle signs that suggested Buck wasn’t straight — from his sister Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) saying he had a “boy crush” on Eddie and talking about setting him up with her co-worker Josh (Bryan Safi) to a memorable interaction between Buck and 9-1-1: Lone Star‘s TK, and more. As the crumbs piled up and the seasons passed, fans started to fear the show was leading them on with no real intentions of making Buck canonically queer. That’s why Buck and Tommy’s kiss was such a huge deal.
As Stark noted in his Instagram Story, there was an overwhelmingly positive reaction to Buck’s bisexuality from fans, but it’s also worth noting how supportive of the storyline the actor has been since “Buck, Bothered and Bewildered” aired.
On top of repeatedly thanking and validating viewers for picking up on supporting evidence in past seasons and never abandoning the conversation, Stark said he felt the storyline made complete sense and had been a long time coming.
“If you look back, and I don’t know if it was even intentional from anybody in the moment, I think that the thread is there throughout. So coming to this moment now is really exciting and deserved and earned,” Stark told TVLine. “I’ve probably believed for a long time that we should end up in this place. I withdrew myself a lot from social media because you would see these things [about Buck] and I would agree… but I couldn’t agree, right? It was such a fine line, because if things didn’t happen, then I’d have been quote-unquote queerbaiting. So thank you [to those fans] for sticking with the story, and I hope there’s an element of it that feels right. I also hope you continue to stay on board and enjoy the story as we tell it.”
As for viewers who want to jump ship now that another queer character was introduced, Stark says, “You are not required to announce your departure.”
New episodes of 9-1-1 premiere Thursdays at 8:00 p.m. ET on ABC.
