The 113 is back on duty tonight. ‘9-1-1: Nashville,’ ABC’s Music City entry in the long-running first-responder franchise, returns for its second season on Thursday, October 15, airing at 9 p.m. ET/PT on ABC and streaming the following day on Hulu, according to USA Today and The Tennessean. Independent TV listings coverage of ABC’s Thursday night lineup confirms the same slot: the premiere anchors a full franchise night on the network, and Memorable TV’s listings also list the Season 2 premiere for 9 p.m. tonight.
The show, which premiered its first season in 2025, follows Nashville firefighters, paramedics and dispatchers through the kind of outsized emergencies the franchise is famous for, layered over the family and relationship drama that keeps viewers coming back between rescues. Season 2 arrives with its ensemble settled in — including Jessica Capshaw and series addition Ryan Phillippe — and with a cast that, by all accounts, has genuinely settled into the city the show is named for.
Tight Lips and Joke Spoilers
Do not expect the cast to tell you what is coming. Reporting from The Tennessean’s Bryan West, via the USA TODAY Network, found the actors cheerfully tight-lipped about the season’s emergencies. Michael Provost, who plays Ryan Hart, and Hunter McVey, who plays Blue Bennings, teased the season only in jokes — name-checking murder hornets and snakes while making clear they were not about to give away anything real. It is a familiar premiere-week ritual, but it underlines the franchise formula: the emergencies are the spectacle, and the spectacle stays under wraps until airtime.
What the cast was happy to talk about was Nashville itself — which is where this spinoff separates itself from its predecessor in a way that matters both on screen and off.
A Spinoff That Actually Lives Where It Is Set
‘9-1-1: Lone Star’ was set in Texas but largely filmed in California. ‘9-1-1: Nashville’ does it the other way around: Tennessee is the production headquarters, full stop. According to the Tennessee Entertainment Commission figures cited by The Tennessean, the production was projected to create more than 600 jobs and generate approximately $50 million in local economic activity. Those are projection numbers, not audited results, but the footprint is tangible — much of the cast has relocated, at least temporarily, to Music City during production.
Kimberly Williams-Paisley, who plays dispatcher Cammie Raleigh, was already based in the area before the show arrived, and she singled out the National Museum of African American Music as a favorite place to disappear into the history of the city’s sound. Provost praised The Cookery, a nonprofit restaurant and training program serving people experiencing homelessness. And McVey has a full-circle spot of his own: the Wild Beaver Saloon, where his character Blue Bennings’ first scenes were filmed, is a place he had already visited after college. When actors can point to real neighborhood institutions they actually use, the city stops being a backdrop and starts being a cast member — and local viewers can tell the difference.
Why the Home-Base Choice Matters
There is a practical television argument here, too. A procedural that shoots where it is set builds a library of real locations — real streets, real venues, real light — that no backlot can fake cheaply. It also builds a local crew base and a working relationship with the city that compounds over seasons: the second year of a show like this usually looks more confident than the first precisely because the production has learned its home turf. Season 2 is where a franchise spinoff either becomes a durable Thursday habit or fades into the long list of one-and-done offshoots; the early bet ABC is making, with a prime slot and a settled cast, is clearly on durability.
A Full Franchise Night on ABC
The premiere does not arrive alone. Listings coverage from The TV Cave notes that ABC is bringing its entire Thursday drama lineup back on the same night, with the flagship ‘9-1-1’ opening its new season at 8 p.m. ET before Nashville takes the 9 p.m. hour. Memorable TV’s listings identify the Season 2 premiere episode as “Going Rogue,” with the 113 responding to a museum emergency involving murder hornets — a premise that lands differently after a premiere-week press cycle in which the cast was joking about exactly those creatures while insisting their lips were sealed. Whether the joke was a wink at the actual premiere or a coincidence of the franchise’s house style, viewers will not have to wait long to find out: the answer airs within the first hour of the season.
That scheduling tells its own story about where the show stands. Networks do not hand a second-year spinoff the middle hour of a three-show franchise night unless the first season did its job with viewers. Season 1, which premiered in 2025, had to introduce an entirely new firehouse family in a new city while living in the shadow of one of broadcast television’s most durable procedurals. Season 2 no longer has to explain what the show is. It only has to be more of it — bigger emergencies, deeper roots in Nashville, and a cast that now includes Ryan Phillippe alongside Jessica Capshaw and the returning ensemble.
How to Watch
‘9-1-1: Nashville’ Season 2 premieres tonight, Thursday, October 15, at 9 p.m. ET/PT on ABC. Episodes stream the following day on Hulu, so cord-cutters are only ever a sleep behind. If you are catching up, Season 1 is the place to start — the Hart family dynamics and the 113’s internal history carry straight into the new episodes.
For more of tonight’s premieres and returns, see our coverage of ‘All’s Fair’ Season 2, and for another star’s big week in the spotlight, our report on Kelly Clarkson’s Las Vegas performance. Looking further ahead, Jason Statham fans can check out ‘The Beekeeper 2’ trailer and poster.
