Warning: Spoilers for 9-1-1 season eight.
When it comes to the stages of grief, I donât see the 9-1-1 fandom moving past anger over Peter Krauseâs untimely exit any time soon.
During last nightâs episode of 9-1-1, fans watched the Fire Famâfor lack of a better wordâscurry to find a cure for a fast-moving, deadly strain of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever that had infected firefighter Howard âChimneyâ Han (Kenneth Choi) after a laboratory explosion. All the while, it was Captain Bobby Nash (Peter Krause) we really had to worry about.
After Bobbyâs own wife, police sergeant Athen Grant (Angela Bassett), painstakingly tracked down a single dose of the antiviral concocted by a megalomaniac scientist seeking a fast pass to a Nobel Prize, we learned the fire captain knowingly kept his own exposure a secret to save Chim and convince the government to free the other two firefighters trapped with them.
In what appears to be his final moments of martyrdom, Bobby proceeds to traumatize his pseudo-son Evan âBuckâ Buckley (Oliver Stark) by sealing himself back into the lab and removing his mask, revealing his oxygen line had been compromised during the explosion. He then says goodbye to his wife, telling her, âThis isnât how I wanted to leave you. Iâm not choosing to leave you.â (I didnât really hear the rest because I was crying and refuse to watch it again. Sue me.)
It turns out that quote might as well have come from Peter Krause, who did notâas one might assumeâchoose to leave the long-running procedural, therefore forcing the showâs creator to choose between a soft exit and killing off a beloved character. Though Krause âcompletely understoodâ the storyline (you can read his actual message to fans here), creator Tim Minear told TV Line the decision was purely creative.