(Spoiler alert: The following article discusses the entirety of “9-1-1” Season 6, Episode 8, titled “What’s Your Fantasy?”)
In Fox’s “9-1-1” Season 6, May Grant’s (Corinne Massiah) main problem might be making it to her USC classes on time, but Monday night’s eighth episode — titled “What’s Your Fantasy?” — finds her once again on the receiving end of a distressing emergency call, one in which she must de-escalate a deeply personal life-or-death situation. Daughter to Angela Bassett’s Athena, the recurring character stumbles upon a troubled peer who is deep into penning a disturbing QAnon-adjacent manifesto, forcing May to apprehend the conspiracy theorist as he takes her boyfriend, Darius, hostage.
“My reaction to reading the script, I was like, ‘Holy crap, like, we’re really doing this, we’re really going with this,’” Massiah told TheWrap in an interview. “I think it was really cool that they implemented these conspiracy theories and seeing how detrimental these opinions can really be to kids that are so gullible to [them]. My biggest takeaway was, ‘How did May handle this?’ She was so calm. If this were me, I’d be freaking out, having an anxiety attack. It was just a really interesting episode, and it was really cool that May saw this manifesto and she knew she needed to say something before something really, really bad happened.”
May’s early intervention of what was sure to be a tragedy to come was one that the procedural’s cast and creatives took seriously, Massiah said, adding that the goal of the episode was to be “authentic” and “raise awareness” about such harmful ideologies, while not “milking” its realities.
“We wanted to make sure that we weren’t being disrespectful, that we were portraying it as authentic as possible,” the actress said. “Also just showing how dangerous a lot of these politicians and their conspiracy theories are to developing young adults who are seriously taking these conspiracy theories to heart and are potentially acting out mass destruction.”
While Season 4 saw May struggle to keep her emotions out of dispatch calls under Maddie’s (Jennifer Love Hewitt) tutelage, she had no trouble doing so this time around: “Even though May hasn’t been a dispatcher this season, she was able to slip back into this role so easily, put the hero cap back on. It was a result of her training and knowing that the minute she puts her emotions into the situation, that’s giving Eric what he wants, and she won’t be thinking clearly in order to get Darius out of the situation,” Massiah said.
The character’s capability to navigate complex and traumatic situations following her time at the call center is a strength that even her mother recognizes, Massiah said. While the episode initially sees May lean on Athena’s advice upon discovering the manifesto, the relationship later flips to one of two professionals working in tandem to solve a crisis.
“After Eric takes Darius hostage, we see that mother-daughter relationship switch to a colleague relationship,” she said, “and we see that Athena has so much trust in May to handle this call, which I think was really admirable — to see Athena not necessarily undermine May’s abilities and say, ‘No, don’t handle it, you can’t handle it. You’re too young, you’re too inexperienced.’”
As for what’s next for May, Massiah isn’t convinced that the character has found her way yet, though she’s confident that trying to be a normal college student can’t hurt.
“I don’t think she’s necessarily held her purpose yet,” the actress said. “And I do admire how she made the decision for herself to step away from the dispatch center to try college because I know there was a really powerful conversation between May and Claudette in Episode 16 last season, about Claudette saying, ‘You’re so young, you have so much potential. Are you sure you want to put yourself through so much trauma, every call you take?’ And I think May took those words to heart and she’s like, ‘You know what, she’s right. I need to try something new, at least try.’”
