Did Landon Set Fire That Killed Vince?

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Fire Country Season 4 Episode 8 “Fresh Start.”]

As anyone who watched SEAL Team knows, Max Thieriot and Alona Tal were great onscreen together. Her guest starring on his Fire Country, debuting in the Friday, December 12 episode shows the chemistry is still there.

Tal plays Chloe, the mother of Tyler (Conor Sherry), whom Bode (Thieriot) rescued in the previous episode. Her boyfriend, Landon (Josh McDermitt), told Bode of the problems they’d been having with the teen, and since then, Tyler’s apparently been stopping by 42 every afternoon — a fact that Chloe is unaware of until Sharon (Diane Farr) fills her in during a drunk-driving drill at his high school. (Sharon also tells her everyone knew about her crush on Bode in high school.) Bode, meanwhile, learns Chloe’s also the math teacher now. “She used to teach me math,” he says, clearly remembering those days (and proving the crush was mutual).

When Chloe stops by 42, she tells Bode that the problems with Tyler started before they lost their house in the Zabel Ridge fire that killed Vince. She can’t figure out why her kid is acting out, and Bode admits that when he looks at him, he sees himself before things started to get really bad. “Tyler can do a lot worse than ending up like Bode Leone,” Chloe remarks. Upon seeing the graffiti Tyler drew on the ambulance, Bode calls him in to clean it and tells him he’s trying to keep him from ending up like him. “Good, because my stepdad told me that he’d kill me if I do,” Tyler says. Uh-oh.

Despite Tyler’s “death” during the drill and subsequent memorial being fake — a way to try to get teens to realize the consequences of drunk driving — Chloe does get emotional, as does Sharon, who has to step away and take a moment in the bunk room to deal with her own, very real grief over her husband’s death. “Vince, oh god, it hits me at the weirdest times,” she says. “Vince, you have Riley, right? You have her, and I have Bode. We’re going to get through this.”

Tyler, however, interrupts the memorial to call out how fake everything is when they lost real people and houses in the future. And when Sharon tries to bring up the nice things his parents have said, Tyler stops her to stress that Landon is not his father before leaving.

Later, Chloe takes advice from Sharon to ask for help and turns to Bode since Tyler talks to him. But when they get back to her house, it’s to Landon yelling at Tyler and getting in his face. Bode immediately pulls him off and pins him to the wall, while Chloe checks on her son to make sure he didn’t touch him. “You don’t ever talk to Tyler like that,” Bode warns Landon before, off Chloe’s request, he takes the kid outside. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t run you down with my car in the driveway,” she demands of Landon.

Outside, Tyler reveals to Bode that Landon acts like that when his mom’s not around. “I hate him. He hurt everyone, he hurts everyone, he hurt me, my house, all of Edgewater, the fires, everything’s his fault,” he says. Bode latches onto that — did Landon start the Zabel Ridge fire? Tyler insists he forgot what he said, but Bode can’t, and, once he has Chloe and Tyler at 42, he calls his mom to fill her in.

Elsewhere, Bode’s uncle Luke (Michael Trucco) is officially back from Japan — he’s now the new assistant unit chief — and looking to his nephew’s future. Specifically, he wants Bode to be part of Cal Fire’s new REMS (Rapid Extraction Module Support) team. He can do so while continuing to be at 42, he assures him, and he plans to help Bode complete the last item on his probie checklist. Their rescue that day isn’t exactly what it says, but Luke twists it just enough to make it fit.

But then Luke gets emotional as he looks at Bode’s probe task book. “Look, Bode, I wasn’t always there for you when I should have been. I always gotta be the fun uncle, you know, while your parents tried so damn hard to do right by you. I know that I cannot fill the hole that my brother left in this family, but I do know it was your dad’s …” It takes him a moment here, a great beat to acknowledge that Luke is still grieving for his brother. “It was your dad’s dream to sign your completed task book.” Bode tells him, “And a Leone is.” With that, Bode is now Firefighter Leone, no longer a probie.

What do you think of that possible reveal about the fire that killed Vince, Max Thieriot and Alona Tal’s onscreen reunion, and having Luke back? Let us know in the comments section below.

Fire Country, Fridays, 9/8c, CBS