[This story contains Major spoilers from season eight, episode fifteen of 911, “Lab Rats.”]

911 co-creator and showrunner Tim Minear is afraid the rumors are true: Robert “Bobby” Nash (Peter Krause), the beloved fire captain of the Lafd’s Station 118, has just answered his last call.

“Bobby’s dead,” Minear confirms to The Hollywood Reporter in an interview about the biggest creative swing he has ever taken in his three-decade career. Some viewers will want to believe that Bobby’s death is a fakeout — after all, this is a show known for pulling its main characters back from death’s door time and again — but the steward of the 911 franchise insists that he just killed off his male lead: “The body bag didn’t convince you?”

“I’ve heard that many fans are upset by this loss and they have a right to be. It is a loss,” Krause said in a statement about his departure from the series (read it in full here). “That said,...