[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Countdown Season 1 Episode 10 “The Muzzle Pile.”]

Meachum (Jensen Ackles) gets quite the wake-up call and makes a couple major decisions in the latest episode of Countdown.

First, he sees just how detrimental continuing to be on the job with a brain tumor causing debilitating headaches and vertigo is when he’s briefly down in his and Oliveras’ (Jessica Camacho) pursuit of Volchek (Bogdan Yasinski), who’s ready to set off bombs at the Vine. (Fortunately, Meachum does take the shot when he needs to and kills Volchek.)

“It’s probably never been an issue for him. He’s always been the go-to guy,” Ackles tells TV Insider in the video interview above. “And so for him to now have to deal with the fact that he might be putting his team in jeopardy, that is also something that he has not dealt with and is having to wrestle with internally.”

While Meachum had been resigned to dying on the job since he thought his diagnosis was terminal, Oliveras’ old friend Julio (Eddie Aguirre), a neuro-oncologist, reveals he doesn’t have to, and the detective agrees to the treatment. According to Ackles, that was “a huge curveball” for him and he credits the task force with why he goes through with it.

“I think if he was still going it alone, if he was still just at the department doing his day-to-day detective stuff, maybe he wouldn’t have thought of this as an opportunity. He would’ve just stayed the course and just run out the time that he had left,” he explains. “But I kind of feel like now that he has found himself in this team of misfits that he identifies with and he’s found a core group of people that he believes in and a mission that he believes in, now he’s like, ‘Okay, well, maybe an extension or a possible second chance might not be the worst thing.’ And so it is a tough thing for him to get to because he’s a hardheaded kind of guy.”

Prior to the treatment, Meachum makes the very mature decision to hit a hard pause on what he and Oliveras could be. “I know that I’m wrapped up in a lot of s**t right now, a lot of s**t, and if, when, if I make it to the other side of whatever the hell this is, I really want to try and do things right,” he tells her. “I don’t even know if I support it, but I think it’s the best way to do it.” She agrees.

In that moment, “He is a bit selfless in his mind, even though what he’s been doing up to this point was pretty selfish, not telling everybody what’s going on with him,” working with the brain tumor and not telling anyone, says Ackles.

“I think he kind of resorted back to his like, ‘No, no, I don’t want to weigh you down. I don’t know what this is going to be like. I’ve never done this, but I certainly don’t need you there wiping drool from my lip. That’s not the image that I need you to have of me,’” he continues. “He was thinking, ‘I don’t want to drag somebody else down and I don’t want — because maybe it doesn’t work and now she’s spent all this time with him helping him go through … he doesn’t understand what it could be. I mean, it might be really awful. And then to end up maybe it not working and him dying, and now he just drug her through the mud emotionally and physically, I don’t think he is the kind of person that would want to impose that on anybody, even if he loves her.”

But at that point, Oliveras was “willing to take a risk,” Camacho says. “I think it’s the one area that’s been maybe off limits for her the most, is kind of leaving herself open to that kind of vulnerability, which is why it’s so hard for her in that moment to kind of be clear about it, because it’s scary, because that has risk and it’s not risk of your life ending potentially, but it’s the risk of being so many things — rejected, used, ignored, unwanted, any of it. But I think at this point, she feels like for whatever reasons, it might be worth the risk.”

Watch the full video interview with Jensen Ackles about Meachum’s treatment, relationship with Oliveras, and more above.

Countdown, Wednesdays, Prime Video