Surprising breakup at Lone Star premiere – have we seen the last of it? [Spoiler]?

Romance will be for Owen Strand in the last season of 9-1-1: Lone Star.

In Monday's premiere, Rob Lowe's character was in grief counseling and casually mentioned that he and Kendra (Michaela McManus) are no longer in a relationship, which is one of the reasons he now feels like he's living in a fog.

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Aside from Owen accidentally crushing Kendra's husband's frozen ribcage during resuscitation, the couple seemed to be doing pretty well when we last saw them at TK and Carlos' wedding in the season 4 finale. So what happened? According to showrunner Rashad Raisani, there are two reasons for this – one on camera and one off.

Let's start with the reason on camera: “What we wanted to say when we meet Owen at the beginning of this episode is that it is clearly something “There's everything going on,” Raisani tells TVLine. “We say he's living in this fog. He's frozen in place.” Owen's personal crisis will play out in the first five or six episodes of the final season, Raisani says, clarifying that “there's something going on with Owen that's smothering and suffocating a lot of the joy in his life.”

If that's not enough of a roadmap for you, Raisani jokes that the third episode of the season “gives us our first clue as to what's going on,” adding, “Owen has to confront and go to that dark place before he can free himself of his burden.”

The second reason for Owen and Kendra's ignominious split is that there simply wasn't enough room in the show's abbreviated final season. “We just didn't have enough room in those first few episodes to get someone of Michaela's caliber,” says Raisani. “We weren't going to ask her to join just for a one-time thing, because that wasn't the direction the narrative wanted to go in those first few episodes.”

Elsewhere in the 9-1-1: Lone Star In the premiere, Owen found himself in the difficult position of having to choose between Paul and Marjan as Judd's successor at the firehouse; Carlos – now a Texas Ranger – struggled to earn the respect of his new partner Campbell (Parker Young) while still obsessing over his father's recent murder; and Judd explained that Grace had left town to care for orphans on a Mercy ship.

What do you think about Owen and Kendra's off-camera breakup? Did you hope this relationship would work after his string of failed romances? Then rate the premiere below Leave a comment with all your thoughts.

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