Breaking Down That Crazy '9-1-1' Cliffhanger and [Spoiler]'s Return

9-1-1 left fans on a major cliffhanger after Eddie Diaz found himself drawn to a mysterious figure who reminded him of someone from his past.

Warning: Spoilers below for Season 7 Episode 7 of 9-1-1. 

The Thursday, May 9, episode, titled “A Ghost of a Second Chance,” caught up with Eddie (Ryan Guzman) and Marisol (Edy Ganam) after the duo decided to slow things down with their romance. After hitting the brakes on moving in together, the couple seemed to be doing well as they spent the first half of the episode enjoying ice cream and perusing Los Angeles with Eddie’s son, Christopher (Gavin McHugh).

Things take a turn for the surprising when Eddie notices a shopowner who looks unnervingly like his late wife, Shannon. When the woman — played by Shannon’s actress Devin Kelly with a slightly lighter hair color for the new role — catches Eddie staring, the twosome make eye contact before Eddie scurries away back to Marisol.

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Curiosity gets the best of him, though, and he returns to the store later that day. Pretending to casually look around, he strikes up a conversation with Shannon’s doppelgänger, who introduces herself as Kim. The pair have a fairly flirtatious exchange as Eddie attempts to process what he’s seeing in front of him.

“Who did you say you’re looking for again? Friend or girlfriend, maybe?” Kim asks. Eddie replies, “Oh no, it’s just me and my son, Christopher. Single dad,” failing to mention Marisol’s existence. He leaves the store with “E” and “C” keychains, choosing to leave the “M” behind.

Elsewhere in the episode, Eddie begins to spiral deeper as he reminisces about times with Shannon. A flashback to a conversation between the twosome shows Eddie telling his late wife he’s ready to bring her back into their son’s life following their estrangement — a moment viewers were never given when the story line first evolved back in season 2. A cut to real time, however, reveals that Eddie is daydreaming about the memory — in which he is in bed with his ex — while eating dinner next to Marisol.

When given a moment to come clean about his doppelgänger issue — “Where did you go just now?” Marisol wonders — Eddie decides to stay mum by lying. “I’m here,” he says.

The question is, of course, would Marisol be OK if Eddie was honest about meeting Shannon’s lookalike? Possibly, but there seems to be a deeper issue at hand. That’s all but confirmed in the episode’s final scenes, when Eddie drops Christopher off at Buck’s (Oliver Stark) apartment so he can go out on what he claims is a date with Marisol.

Once he gets to the restaurant, it’s instantly clear Marisol won’t be joining him. Telling his dinner guest that she looks “beautiful,” the camera pans to reveal Kim sitting across from him. “You don’t look so bad yourself,” she smiles back.

What will go down between Eddie and Kim remains to be seen, but it’s certain to carry over into the final few episodes of season 7. Earlier this month, Guzman, 37, confessed that while Eddie and Marisol’s relationship was “strengthening,” fans should expect plenty more bumps in the road.

“There’s so many traumatic moments that Eddie still has yet to answer for himself in his own past,” Guzman told Entertainment Weekly. “So how that plays into this present moment is a balancing act. And what I’d like to see is him handle it with ease, but that doesn’t offer great TV. So yeah, he’s going to be a mess just as much as he was — as we all are, really.”

When speaking with Us Weekly exclusively in April, Guzman said that Eddie deciding against taking the next step with Marisol was a huge “moment of growth” in his personal journey, but also important when figuring out how the character fits in with Christopher.

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“The realization that the pair are moving too fast is a huge moment of “growth” for Eddie. Eddie needs to understand who he’s dealing with before he invites them into this very convoluted life,” he told Us. “I think first and foremost is what it will do for Christopher. He’s always got Christopher on the front end of his mind. So I think there was a lot of growth at the end of this episode and a very hopeful Eddie again.”