Warning: I’m about to spoil 9-1-1‘s biggest, saddest twist yet. If you aren’t completely caught up, turn back now.

9-1-1 just did the unthinkable. Thursday’s episode, the conclusion of its two-part “Contagion” event, ended with the heartbreaking death of Peter Krause‘s Captain Bobby Nash.

In what felt like the blink of an eye, the 118 lost its fearless leader, Athena lost her devoted husband, and 9-1-1 lost the very heart which has kept it going for eight seasons.

Buck and Athena were able to retrieve Moira’s antidote and prevent Chimney’s demise from the deadly virus (it’s a very long story involving a high-speed helicopter chase with the U.S. Army), but the episode still had one last twist in store for viewers. And by a twist, I mean a twist of the knife.

Quarantining himself from the rest of the 118, Bobby revealed to Buck that a hole in his breathing apparatus allowed the virus to enter his mask, but he stayed quiet because he knew that Chimney would never accept the only antidote. “You’re going to be OK, Buck,” he said calmly. “Remember that. They’re going to need you. I love you, kid.”

Then came Bobby’s devastating final moments with Athena. “I’m sorry,” he said with tears streaming down his face. “This isn’t how I wanted to leave you. I’m not choosing to leave you. I chose to save my team because it was the right thing to do. It was never because I wanted to go. I don’t want to go. If I could choose, I would stay with you. Always.” 

“LA was supposed to be my penance, not my home,” he told her. “And then you said yes to a dinner invitation and I started to live again. I love you, baby.”

Below, 9-1-1 showrunner Tim Minear explains the circumstances leading up to Bobby’s death (including those unfortunate leaks on social media), his thought process behind the tragic loss, and what’s next for Athena and the 118. Plus, have we really seen the last of Krause?

Read on for our full Q&A, then drop a comment with your own reaction to Bobby’s death.

• Image Credit: Courtesy of Disney/Christopher Willard
• TVLINE | I guess it would have been too on-the-nose to call this episode “Bobby Ends,” huh?
• Yeah, although I probably could have after that Twitter leak.
• TVLINE | Let’s start with that. I mean, you filmed [Bobby’s procession] outside in Los Angeles, then you called that episode “The Last Alarm.” Were you worried about spoilers getting out, or did you almost want fans to be able to prepare for this?
• I did not want spoilers. We went to a lot of insane degrees to try to prevent them. But then no one thought that if we take Bobby’s coffin out into downtown LA, people might notice. We’re not that bright on some level. The truth is, funnily enough for our little firefighter show, the LA fires really threw a wrench into the schedule, so we had to pause production for quite a while. In order to still make the same air dates, we’ve been going seven days a week, just trying to get it there. So when we went out there on that weekend, we thought, “Well, hopefully this won’t [get out],” but the next thing I know it’s being streamed live on TikTok. I think I underestimated the level of interest.
• Image Credit: Courtesy of Disney/Christopher Willard
• TVLINE | How did we even get here? Did Peter come to you and say he was ready to be done?
• No, this was entirely a creative decision on my part, really. I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I kind of hinted at it in the Hot Shots episode when Brad Torrance is saying that [his character] isn’t going wake up from his coma, and he had that fan going, “You can’t kill him off! He’s what holds the [firehouse] together!” I was really thinking seriously about it when we wrote that scene. Look, am I crawling out on a skinny branch? Maybe. On the other hand, if the stakes are never real, if there’s really no chance that any of this peril in which these characters find themselves amounts to anything, I think the show could die.
• Image Credit: Courtesy of Disney/Christopher Willard
• TVLINE | So how did Peter take that news? Was this something he always thought could be possible?
• I don’t know, actually. I mean, we had talked about it before. He was really professional about it and completely understood, creatively, why I wanted to do it. None of us wanted to do it, because if I kill off Bobby then Peter Krause is going to be a casualty of that choice. That was the hardest part about it, to be honest. I didn’t want to not keep working with Peter.
• But I think we both understood that, for the health of the show and in order to give all of the characters more story, something like this needed to happen. That’s really why I decided to do it. When I was breaking the two-part lab episode, I thought there should be a death there. As we were breaking it, I realized how epic that death could be [for Bobby], and it just seemed like, if I was ever going to do this, now’s the time. I’m not going to have a better scenario in which to give Bobby a moment of ultimate sacrifice, which is the logical culmination of his arc from the beginning of the series.
• Image Credit: Courtesy of Disney/Christopher Willard
• TVLINE | So you’ve kind of always operated under the assumption that Bobby’s story would end with a sacrifice?
• Yeah. For a long time, we talked about there being some kind of house fire where Bobby would go in and rescue Harry and May, so he would save Athena’s children when he couldn’t save his own. There was a whole bunch of possible ways to go. But like I said, I had the opportunity to give somebody an epic death and I didn’t want to waste it.
• TVLINE | You certainly didn’t waste it. It was rough seeing a beloved character go out like that, vomiting up all that blood. Did you ever consider scaling it back, or did you just want us to feel everything?
• It actually is pretty scaled back. It could easily have turned into an episode of American Horror Story or 28 Days Later or something. It was Peter’s idea to turn away and go into that prayerful posture at that table. What you’re seeing is probably a couple of hours compressed into a two-minute montage with all the characters completely separated and no one there to comfort anybody. It needed to be clear enough that that’s what was happening, but it’s not like he’s bleeding out of his eyeballs or something.
• Image Credit: Courtesy of Disney/Ray Mickshaw
• TVLINE | You mentioned Athena earlier. She’s strong, but this would rock anyone’s world. How does she move forward from this?
• It rocks all of them, and that’s why I didn’t want to do this at the end of a season. I wanted about three episodes to grieve with the characters, which is what you’re going to get. They’re all going to have to approach it in their own way, and it’s not going to be super easy.
• TVLINE | Some of Bobby’s last words are to Buck, telling him that everybody’s going to need him. How is he going to take those words to heart? I feel like that would haunt me forever.
• And he is haunted. He’s not sure what to do with [Bobby’s words], to be honest.
• Image Credit: Courtesy of Disney/Christopher Willard
• TVLINE | Well, if there’s one thing I am sure of, it’s that Maddie and Chimney have to name their son Bobby… right?
• Oh, that’s interesting.
• TVLINE | Come on, I truly can’t imagine a scenario in which they wouldn’t at least consider it.
• I mean, I actually was going to have them name the baby Grant, but you might have something there.
• Image Credit: Courtesy of Disney/Christopher Willard
• TVLINE | Whether it’s in a dream or in a new “flashback,” will we see Peter Krause as Bobby again this season?
• You have not seen the last of him this season, no.
• TVLINE | As you alluded to earlier, killing off one of your show’s main leads is a huge gamble. The fans are going to freak out, and there are going to be concerns. What can you say to those who are really worried? Is this death going to loom large over everything that happens moving forward, or is this going to be same 9-1-1?
• All of those things. I don’t think you can make a move like this and not have it not loom large over things going forward, which is a plus and a minus. On the plus side, the next time I put one of your beloved characters in peril, you might be gripping the arms of your chair a little bit tighter because you know that I might do it again, because I’ve done it before. The stakes are real is kind of what I want to say. When I landed on this idea, the world suddenly felt more real to me. The characters felt more real to me. They felt like real people. I’ve killed off a lot of characters in my day, but this was hard for everybody, for the entire cast. Peter was very emotional about it. We’ve all had eight years to bond. That’s the longest show I’ve ever been on — not counting American Horror Story, where everybody dies every season.