9-1-1 fans spent two weeks holding out hope that showrunner Tim Minear would bring the 118’s fearless captain back to life after his show-altering death in Episode 815, but a devastating funeral episode on May 1 confirmed that Peter Krause’s beloved character, Bobby Nash, is indeed dead.
9-1-1‘s two-part Contagion-inspired thriller saw Bobby, Hen (Aisha Hinds), Ravi (Anirudh Pisharody), and Chimney (Kenneth Choi) locked in a bio lab, where they were exposed to a deadly virus. Knowing there was only one antiviral, Bobby sacrificed himself to save Chimney’s life, and the heartbreaking episode ended with Cap being carried out of the lab in a body bag.
Despite that sight and all the post-mort press confirming Bobby’s death and Krause’s departure from the show, fans still had reason to believe that Cap would be resurrected in the future. But the finality that came with his funeral in Episode 816, “The Last Alarm,” convinced many fans who were holding out hope for Bobby’s return to accept the idea that the core character is gone for good.
If you thought the first round of fan backlash after Episode 815 was intense, just wait until you see the reactions to Episode 816. Following 9-1-1: Contagion, Minear explained his reasoning behind killing Bobby and told Deadline that the move was “100% creative.”
“Going into Season 9, I have all these perilous situations that I put the characters into, and I think maybe the writers but also the audience starts to get a little complacent because it’s like, well, we all know it’s going to all work out fine in the end,” Minear said. “I had been toying with the idea for a couple of seasons actually, maybe even longer, feeling like at some point I’m going to have to do this. And then once I came up with this idea for the lab leak episode, that’s when it solidified for me that it was time to do it, it felt like a real opportunity to give somebody an epic Wrath of Khan-like death. When it came down to deciding who should that be, I wanted it to be a character that affected all the characters’ stories in a very specific and yet different ways. There was only one man for the job, and it was Bobby.”
While Krause did return to screens in Episode 816 via a flashback and several visions from characters, Bobby Nash wasn’t magically resurrected like fans were hoping. As viewers processed the funeral episode and Cap’s loss, many expressed disappointment in 9-1-1‘s storylines, execution, writing, and overall sendoff.
Some fans are so upset at the way Bobby’s death and Krause’s departure played out that they’ve taken to review bombing “The Last Alarm,” which currently sits at a low 2.2 stars on IMDb. Others have threatened to stop watching 9-1-1 entirely. And a few hopeful fans who refuse to accept that Bobby isn’t coming back feel there are still ways he could return alive down the line.
No matter where 9-1-1 goes from here, it’s clear that the first main character death deeply impacted viewers and will leave fans of Bobby Nash — a core component of the show’s heart — reeling for quite some time. The series has already been renewed for Season 9, but on the heels of such a heartbreaking late-in-the-game twist, it’s crucial that these final two episodes of Season 8 deliver.
New episodes of 9-1-1 premiere Thursdays at 8:00 p.m. ET on ABC with next-day streaming on Hulu.
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