The ninth season of Shameless is already 11 episodes in and the family drama is at an all-time high.
The Showtime series follows neighborhood drunk Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy) and his six children, Fiona played by Emmy Rossum, Lip played by Jeremy Allen White, Ian played by Cameron Monaghan, Debbie played by Emma Kenney, Carl played by Ethan Cutkosky, and Liam currently played by Christian Isaiah.
Throughout the series, fans watched as Fiona assumed the role of mother to her siblings and constantly put them first, often to her own detriment. As the siblings got older, she took the opportunity to branch out and finally live her own life. She worked her way up from waitress to manager at a local diner and even explored property investments. However, after a series of unfortunate events, Fiona ends up having to sell her building and move back home. During this time, she also found out her boyfriend had a wife.
This season, Fiona has seemingly given up and has found herself in a booze-fueled spiral with no end in sight.
Warning: Spoilers Ahead
On tonight’s episode, viewers first see Fiona as she’s waking up on the floor of a motel room. The eldest (technically second eldest) Gallagher daughter picks herself up and begins collecting her things, which are scattered across the room. It seems she had a long night of partying and ended up crashing in a room with an equally drunk group of friends. While collecting her things, she finds a bottle of OxyContin in the purse of one of the women. She grabs the bottle of drugs, but wasn’t able to make her escape without alerting the others.
Eventually, she makes it home and quickly pours herself a drink. She tries to take a late morning nap but Debbie reminds her about monies owed and she makes a U-turn and heads out the door. Fiona makes her way to the same street corner Carl and Frank previously occupied to sell drugs. A car approaches and she hands off the stolen drugs and collects a wad of cash.
She returns home and hands the money to Debbie and finally gets some well-deserved sleep. While asleep, there’s a knock at the door and it’s an inspector from CPS. The inspection doesn’t go well and Lip ends up blaming his older sister for messing up his chances of adopting Xan.
“The old Fiona would have handled this,” he yelled.
Fiona has definitely come a long way from dependable mother-figure to spiraling drunk, but it seems she’s had enough of being everyone’s rock.
After her fight with Lip, she goes looking for him to apologize but runs into his AA sponsee Jason instead. Jason has just celebrated 100 days of being sober, but Fiona doesn’t know this and she pulls out a bottle of vodka. The young dad stares at the bottle before requesting a drink and Fiona pours it for him. Jason eventually calls Lip and explains what happened, but despite insisting it was his own fault, Lip still blames his sister.
In the final scene, Lip storms into the house to find Fiona chatting and laughing with Debbie and Carl on the couch and he picks another fight. He then tells her she needs to get out of the house, but she just laughs it off.
In the preview for next week’s episode, the siblings appear to get into another huge altercation after Lip packs Fiona’s things into large plastic bags in an attempt to evict her.
It’s clear this epic downfall is the show’s way of setting up Fiona’s exit from the show. In 2018, the actress penned a heartfelt note to fans announcing that Season 9 will be her final season of the show, as previously reported by the Inquisitr . It’s unclear how she’ll actually be written out, but with only three episodes left, fans won’t have to wait too long to find out.
Shameless airs on Sundays on Showtime.