9-1-1 is never going to be the same. From the moment that Captain Bobby Nash (Peter Krause) was killed off in Season 8, we knew that to be true. And Jennifer Love Hewitt, who plays dispatcher Maddie, has said the same thing.
The world of 9-1-1 without Bobby is “sad. Sad. It’s not the same. Nothing is the same,” she told Entertainment Tonight on the I Know What You Did Last Summer carpet on Monday, July 14. “But I do think that when you’re telling a story about first responders, unfortunately, those are the things that happen and he was the person that mattered to everyone in the cast the most and so I felt like he was our hero and he always will be.”
That echoes what showrunner Tim Minear told TV Insider after the episode in which Bobby was killed off. The 118 was trapped in a lab, and he gave the only anti-viral for a super-virus to the other firefighter infected, Chimney (Kenneth Choi), Maddie’s husband.
“It was a creative decision. Nobody wanted Peter to leave, most of all me, but I just felt like we’re going into Season 9 and it would’ve been comfortable to keep everything status quo and happy happy. But it’s a first responder show, and I put these people in life and death situations, except you could probably look at it and say I just put them in life situations because no one ever dies. So it just felt like it was time,” Minear explained.
“I had considered other possible deaths, but when I was breaking this story and saw that this could be a truly epic goodbye for a character, I just figured it should be the character who’s going to affect every character’s story on the show. And that’s Bobby, and Bobby’s character,” he continued. “It made a certain amount of sense for the arc of his character and that he came here for redemption and that he came here with a death wish, really. And then his whole story is about how he no longer has a death wish. He never feels completely worthy of the happiness that he’s received, but when he makes that sacrifice, he doesn’t want to go, but he achieves the culmination of everything that has been driving that character for eight seasons. So it wasn’t a hard creative choice to make. It was a very hard creative choice to make, if that makes sense.”
As 9-1-1 gets back in production, Hewitt told Entertainment Tonight she’s excited. “It’s my favorite. I miss my people. I oddly miss crying every day all day long so I’m excited to do that again and see what emergencies we have,” she said.
An exact premiere date has yet to be announced for 9-1-1 Season 9, but we do know it will continue to air Thursdays at 8/7c. It will also be joined this fall by the new spinoff, 9-1-1: Nashville.
9-1-1, Season 9, Fall 2025, Thursdays, 8/7c, ABC