With the big wedding coming down to the wire, we all knew that there was going to be some big drama coming up, but Wednesday's preview of next week's episode of Nashville , "First To Have A Second Chance, "shows that Deacon might be killed off after relapsing. For the past three seasons the show has depicted his struggle with alcoholism, both past and present. We've seen the flashbacks of the early days when it wrecked his relationship with Rayna, and even in the early episodes of this season we saw him battling the urge to drink. But it looks like the conversation that he had with Rayna at the end of tonight's episode might be just the tipping point that can push Deacon back over the edge.
So far, all we know from the preview is that Scarlett finds an unconscious Deacon on the floor of his house at some point during next week's episode, and that he is holding a shot glass, which is a little shocking considering how long he has been sober. Although drinking in excess after so many years of sobriety could cause him to lose consciousness, there is also the possibility that other kinds of drugs were involved, which leads me all to wonder whether or not his condition in next week's episode was intentional, or if he didn't mean for it to happen.
In any case, this is certainly going to rattle the wedding plans, and will of course affect Maddie, who we found out last season is Deacon's daughter. I can't believe that they would actually kill him off so suddenly when he is such an integral part of the show, so I'm going to assume (with some trepidation) that he lives through this, but obviously falling off of the wagon after all these years is going to bring on its own set of troubles for Deacon, when he is already dealing with losing Rayna yet again. Fingers crossed that they don't make his fate the midseason finale cliffhanger.
Image: Mark Levine/ABC
