9-1-1 Season 4, Episode 11 recap: First Responders

9-1-1 Season 4 intertwines and solves multiple mysteries during this week’s episode with 9-1-1 first responder, Sue Blevins (Debra Christofferson), at the heart of it all. It’s an incredibly jam-packed episode and quite possibly one of the more riveting episodes we’ve had from the series in a while.

One major crisis rules the episode and leads to the capture of one serial kidnapper that is responsible for multiple abductions. The crisis begins when Athena (Angela Bassett) learns about a young black girl that has been missing. When the girl’s initially reported her missing, no one took the report seriously enough to do anything about it.

The case of this one missing girl connects itself to a hit-and-run accident that Sue finds herself the victim of. The episode manages to weave together all these intricate subplots effortlessly, and by the episode’s end, I was quite impressed by how it was all pulled off.

While trying to stop a crime in progress, Sue becomes the hero we’ve always known her to be, and it’s precisely what makes this episode such a worthy watch.

Check out the 9-1-1 Season 4, Episode 11 recap below to see how everything went down–and be sure to let us know if you enjoyed it as much as we did!

9-1-1 Season 4, Episode 11: Sue’s unfortunate run-in

The episode kicks off on a sweet note as Sue’s husband goes to buy her flowers from the supermarket. While he’s doing that, Sue is talking on the phone but quickly hangs up when something catches her attention in the distance.

She runs out towards a car that is gunning straight for her, with the driver showing no intention of stopping. Unfortunately, the driver never does stop and runs right into Sue knocking her over and above the car. Thankfully, she manages to survive the hit but suffers from a major head injury.

9-1-1 Season 4, Episode 11: An emotional flashback plus May’s big decision

May (Corinne Massiah) makes a big revelation to Athena and Michael (Rockmond Dunbar) by declaring she’d like to get her own place. Surprisingly, Athena is on board with the idea and seems rather supportive. This likely has a lot to do with the fact that she and May had an intense argument recently.

If anything it has resulted in her trying to respect May’s desire to be independent. By agreeing to let her move out, she wants May to know she trusts and respects her decisions. Mature mama moment!

Meanwhile, at the 9-1-1 call center, Josh (Bryan Safi), Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt), and Buck (Oliver Stark) try to figure out who hit Sue with their car. The whole situation has Josh in his feelings about how to take care of the call center in Sue’s absence, especially because he feels he owes her his life.

With that, we flashback to 2006, when Josh was a young man working as a freelance stenographer. He shows up for his first day on the job and works late into the evening until he realizes the office has been cleared out and there is a fire alarm going off.

He immediately calls 9-1-1 and you’ll never guess who answers his call on the other side.

Yup, Sue.

She stays on the phone with him as he tries to make his escape out of the building that is being consumed with smoke and flames. He finds an injured woman while trying to get out and carries her up a few flights to get them out of harm’s way.

Eventually, the LA Fire Department shows up to rescue them, and lo and behold, we get our first look at Chimney (Kenneth Choi) back in 2006. Oh, how young he was!

Josh goes to the call center to thank Sue for what she did for him and hugs her despite only having just met her. His curiosity about Sue’s job comes full circle and helps us understand why Josh works at the call center in the present day.

9-1-1 Season 4, Episode 11: The mystery thickens

Buck and Taylor Kelly (Megan West) team up together to help figure out the mysterious details surrounding the hit-and-run case. Using Taylor’s credentials as a news reporter, Buck has her report on the details of the accident to get the public’s attention.

Meanwhile, while responding to a 9-1-1 call, Athena learns about the case of a missing girl named Tracie (Brittany Bardwell). Her mother reveals that she put in a report at the station but it was never taken seriously. And it’s been a few days and her daughter is still missing.

Athena takes matters into her own hands alongside a fellow officer to figure out what happened to Tracie, and they kick things off by visiting her place of work. Through Tracie’s co-worker, Athena learns that Tracie went to the casino the night she disappeared, where the security footage reveals she was drugged by a man sitting at the table next to her. They left the casino together, but after that, their whereabouts are unknown. But they do get a description of the car which happens to match the description of the car that hit Sue.

Taylor and Buck show up to the scene of the hit-and-run where Taylor reveals the footage of Sue being hit by the car. They can’t figure out why Sue was running towards the car so they decide to dumpster dive to see if there are any clues there.

Unfortunately for them, Athena shows up as just as they are about to start and takes over the investigation from them. In the dumpster, they find Tracie’s ID and purse, bringing them one step closer to the weird mystery.

Buck keeps recalling the moment he arrived on the scene and he heard Sue trying to mumble something to him. At the time, it sounded like she was saying 9-1-1, but realizes she was trying to give him a hint about the license plate number.

9-1-1 Season 4, Episode 11: The mystery is solved!

With this new information, Taylor puts out another report with the partial license plate number and alerts LA residents to how both Sue’s hit-and-run and the missing girl case are connected.

People call into the 9-1-1 call center reporting sightings which eventually leads them to a container yard. Tracie is found inside one of the containers while the kidnapper tries to evade the police. With Josh’s help, they’re able to eventually find the guy and apprehend him. Props to Josh’s Sherlock Homes-esque investigative abilities on this one! It looks like he learned from the best!

Sue makes it out of emergency surgery and is awake when Josh goes to pay her a visit. We finally learn what exactly happened that night and what prompted Sue to run towards the car. While she was on the phone that night waiting for her husband, she noticed Tracie in the kidnapper’s car.

Sue could tell Tracie was out of it and then saw that the kidnapper went to throw away something in the dumpster. That is why she decided to run towards the car! Even a hero when she’s off-duty!

The episode ends with the mystery solved, and Athena finally sitting down with May to talk about her plans to move out. Athena supports May’s plan to get her own place but she has a list of conditions that May must follow. She hands her a list of neighborhoods that are safe, things to avoid, along with a handful of things.

I’d say that is a fair trade-off, wouldn’t you?

The episode closes out with Sue returning to the call center to the applause and support of her fellow coworkers. It’s quite an emotional moment, and a fitting one to end the episode on.

Yay for Sue surviving!

What did you think of this week’s episode of 9-1-1 Season 4? Tell us in the comments below!