#oh tommys a plot device 🧐 so you agree he's important to the plot???

[usercelestial]

aside from anything else, if tommy doesn't come back in season 8, it would just feel incredibly narratively unsatisfying, which i think is how you know a lot of the people who are calling for tommy to just be written out between seasons don't actually know how stories work/really only read bad fanfiction because do you know how confusing it would feel to re-introduce a character that has appeared several times in the past as a romantic partner for a main character only for them to break up off screen with no resolution. which i think is especially funny because sometimes some of these people will call him a plot device, which aside from them using that term wrong, doesn't make sense if you also want him to be written out with no explanation. if you think he's a plot device, he actually has to be used for the plot. not just show up, show potential, and then leave with none of that potential being realized.

even when it was natalia, a love interest introduced for the first time in the back half of the season who had no background or defining personality traits, it still felt weird that they just broke up off screen after all the hype around how great their relationship was going to be for buck. it felt unfinished and empty.

imagine that feeling but 10x worse because we actually know tommy already and general audiences have had the time to get connected to him. we have been told directly (i.e. bobby) and shown directly (i.e. the hospital scene, the coffee date scene, the dinner scene, etc etc) that tommy and buck's relationship is significant. regardless of if they'll break it off and do something different with buck's character, at the very least, if contracts n such permit, they will keep him on to see that storyline through.