The *Real* Reason Bobby Was Killed Off of 9-1-1 — and Whether It Was Peter Krause’s Decision to Leave

It was the death heard around Station 118. With 9-1-1 killing off Captain Bobby Nash in one of the show’s most devastating twists of all time, fans are left reeling with questions as to why Bobby had to die and the reasoning behind slaying the show’s leading man.

Why did Bobby die in 9-1-1?

9-1-1 co-creator Tim Minear explained in an interview with Variety that the writers knew they wanted to kill a main character in Season 8 to remind viewers of the stakes that come with being a first responder.

“I still think people grip their seats and are excited when Athena lands a plane on the freeway or a ship capsizes — but after eight years, it just felt like, if we have any hope of creating stories going forward that have actual stakes, then someone’s got to die,” he said.

The writers chose Bobby to die because of how his death would’ve given him a full arc from where he started the series. Before the events of 9-1-1, Bobby moved from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Los Angeles, California, to work as a firefighter for the Los Angeles Fire Department after losing his wife and two children in a fire he inadvertently caused.

In “Lab Rats,” Bobby sacrificed himself by giving Chimney the last antidote, knowing that it would cost him his life. And while Bobby couldn’t save his real family from the fire he started years ago, he was able to save his chosen family — the members of Station 118 — before his own death.

“Well, I think it needed to be Bobby for a lot of reasons. The first reason is that it made sense. It didn’t feel arbitrary, because if you track the tragic arc of his character, of where he started, and how he came to LA looking for atonement, it just makes a kind of tragic sense for his character in a way it wouldn’t for another character,” Minear said.

“But also, I just didn’t want to go small. Not that any of the characters are small, but Bobby’s death affects every single character’s story in a way that really no other character death would.”

What Minear said is true. As the captain of Station 118, Bobby’s death touches almost every member of the cast, including firefighters like Hen, Buck, and Chimney, as well as his wife, Athena.

Bobby’s death could also be the reason for former Station 118 member Eddie’s move back to Los Angeles after he relocated to Texas earlier in the season to be closer to his son. (His death could also be what brings Buck and Eddie together romantically after multiple seasons of “will they? won’t they?” speculation.

Minear also explained why he didn’t want to kill off a smaller character, like he had done on 9-1-1‘s now-canceled spinoff, 9-1-1: Lone Star.

“I mean, maybe I should have started small. Maybe I should have cast a red shirt and beamed down to the planet and have him get eaten by an alien or something.

But no, it’s like, if you’re going to do it, just do it. I had a lot of success on Lone Star with some shocking deaths, but they were never any of the main characters,” he said.

“It was like, if you had a really good father or a beloved mother who wasn’t a first responder, you can just kiss their ass goodbye, because I’m gonna kill them.”

Minear also confirmed that it was his decision, not actor Peter Krause’s, for Bobby to leave 9-1-1. “It was entirely creative. A very difficult creative decision, because there’s practically no one I love on this Earth more than Peter,” he said.

That said, Krause did gave input in how Bobby would be written off. “What he didn’t want was to go out like some horror movie zombie,” he said. “

So it was a real question of, how do you thread that needle and play the poignancy of it, without it just turning into body horror?

And I think when you see the final episode that’s all finished, it was Peter’s idea to have Bobby move to that table and get into this prayerful posture, which I thought was just kind of perfect.”

He continued, “You’re looking at him as an image that you can’t get to. So a lot of the staging of that was Peter, along with Dawn Wilkinson, our director of the episode, and then me.

But when I got to this lab leak episode, and I realized that there was a potential there for an epic death for a character, that’s when Bobby’s number was up. Because I didn’t go into breaking the first part of that, going, ‘This will be Bobby’s death episode!’ But as the story started to present itself, I realized, ‘Oh, he’s not walking out of here.’”