9-1-1's Ryan Guzman Breaks Down Eddie's Close Call: 'The Real Hero of the Story Is Christopher'

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for the latest episode of 9-1-1, "Eddie Begins." Read at your own risk!]

9-1-1 has really been getting our adrenaline pumping over the last couple of weeks, and Monday night's new episode, "Eddie Begins," was no exception. The episode touched on key moments in Eddie Diaz's (Ryan Guzman) difficult personal history, with harrowing flashback sequences interspersed with the action as he faced one of the closest calls of his life in real time.

Glimpses at Eddie's marriage to Shannon (Devin Kelley) revealed the slow, aching process by which the relationship fell apart, as she grew increasingly resentful of his decision to reenlist in the military without consulting her. She ultimately left Eddie to tend to Christopher (Gavin McHugh) by himself while she went to care for her sick mother, and, well, fans know what happened from there. At the same time, though, we also learned just how resilient Eddie was on the battlefield, as he managed to save most of his squad from shooters when their helicopter was brought down in the war.

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Eddie's perseverance in a rescue situation was also front and center in the present-day storyline, as he cut his own safety line to save a boy who had been trapped in a drain pipe and was minutes away from drowning or succumbing to hypothermia. Eddie didn't hesitate for one minute to drop back in to get the boy out, but after Chimney (Kenneth Choi) dropped in after him and brought the kid to safety first, a lightning strike collapsed the exit and Eddie's chance of being rescued, too. What followed was a heart-stopping sequence in which Eddie came very, very close to drowning before finding the resolve to escape -- all the while focusing on how much his son needs him as he swam for another exit.

According to Ryan Guzman, even though Eddie is the one with the medal, the real hero of the story is Christopher -- no, not the saint on the necklace that saved him from certain doom on the battlefield, but the boy who continues to keep him afloat in every encounter, including this one. Guzman spoke to TV Guide about Eddie's journey in the latest 9-1-1 episode, so read on to find out the actor's thoughts on the challenges and rewards of exploring a new side of his character's story.

This was a really intense episode. What was it like for you to dig into Eddie's history like this?
Ryan Guzman: I was pretty excited for the war stuff. I ended up training with a couple of people, and it does help that my fiancée actually knows a lot of people within the gun world and the military world, so we were able to fine-tune some of the tactics. Aside from that, it was just really cool to dive into Eddie as a person and see how he got so closed off and why he doesn't open up to too many people.

Obviously, we knew a good bit about this backstory before, but were there any surprises for you when you got to these flashbacks?
Guzman: Not too much, actually. I kind of had a vision of what I thought Eddie would be like, and the writers pretty closely matched that. A lot of the trauma that Eddie went through, family-wise, and [with] his deceased wife, it was kind of something that I was prepping for already. The Afghanistan stuff, I never knew what was actually going to happen because I always thought it'd be a convoy, but it turned into a helicopter rescue that went sour. But even though I kind of had an image of what it might be, it was completely different than what I thought.

The backstory, with Christopher especially, brings some new resonance to what he went through in the tsunami. And then with Eddie almost drowning as well, there was a clear parallel there. Was there any intention to bring Eddie through this close call at the same time we're looking back on Christopher, who almost drowned as well?
Guzman: I think you can pull a lot from him almost drowning: him being over his head in a lot of areas of his life, and literally being swallowed up by everything that he's going through. You could derive some parallels from the tsunami to this -- I don't think that was the intention, but if it was, then go Tim [Minear, showrunner] and everybody who's writing the story. But I do like that the epicenter of the whole story is getting back to Christopher. That's Eddie's priority and his own mission that actually matters.

Do you think there was ever a moment for Eddie -- especially at that point that gets repeated where he's trying to tell them he's still alive -- that he was afraid the team would give up on him?
Guzman: I don't know if he's so much worried or concerned about the team giving up on him -- more so, now he's in a predicament where he has to get himself out again. That's kind of what Eddie's shown us in the past. He's definitely somebody that doesn't lean on a lot of others. He tries to do everything himself, which can be a huge downfall, but in a time like this when he literally doesn't have anybody, it can be something that helps him out, too. So, I think his main concern wasn't the team. His main concern was "How the hell do I get back to my son?"

You talked a little about the training. Can you talk about the physical challenges of this shoot? There are a lot of elements involved, with the rain and the tight spaces and then obviously the action of the Afghanistan shoot.
Guzman: Oh yeah. I was definitely beat up for sure. I've been beat up a couple of times on this show. I sliced my foot open earlier on the season [on] a metal cage. I hurt my meniscus before. This season, they put me in freezing cold water when it was 30 degrees, I believe, and we were shooting outside at night ... getting no sleep on top of that, dropping down from the tunnel straight on my back. There were definitely a lot of issues as far as getting beat up. But when you're in that kind of atmosphere, you just want to give everything you can for the character and make it realistic. Those are the kind of things you just take and keep moving forward.

Obviously, the backstory with Eddie and all of that action was nerve-wracking, but the part that made me the most jittery was the little boy. What's it like for you to work on these episodes where you guys don't have that element of levity or fun cases? Does that present a new challenge for you as an actor?
Guzman: It actually helps. Especially since you get to meet the other cast members. That little boy was probably the cutest little boy I've met in quite some time, and he kept reminding me of my son. So every time that I was interacting with him, I kept thinking of my son Mateo, and it kind of added other layers of severity to the scenes.

In the final scene when Eddie finally goes to Christopher's school for career day, it seems like something really clicks for him with regard to the medal and his necklace. Is he ready to embrace himself as a hero, and have his priorities changed in any way now?
Guzman: I don't think he's ready to embrace himself as a hero. I think the whole premise of this was just to say that he's been through heroic moments, but the real hero in the story is Christopher. He's the one that's saving Eddie, rather than Eddie saving anybody else. So, I think that when he denotes the fact that he doesn't wear a medal, but he does wear the St. Christopher necklace, that's just more of an homage to the only thing that really matters in his life which is Christopher.

9-1-1 airs Mondays at 8/7c on Fox.