Chicago Fire’s death is One Chicago moment of the week

Chicago Fire’s decision to kill off a beloved character in the Chicago Fire season 8 premiere earns our Moment of the Week honors.

There’s no question what the first Moment of the Week of the 2019-2020 season is: it’s Chicago Fire saying goodbye to Otis (Yuri Sardarov).

One Chicago fans knew that a character was going to die in Wednesday’s premiere, but it was still an emotional gut punch for the audience. Anyone would have made fans upset, but Otis was such a favorite among the viewers that it crushed a lot of people.

It’s not just that Otis died, but the performances that came out of the other cast members after such a tragic plot twist. This one development, as depressing as it was, seemed to lift the whole remainder of the cast to another level in this episode.

That spoke to how valuable not only Otis was to the firehouse, but how valuable Yuri was to the cast and the fans. Everyone was affected by him not being there, and this episode honestly felt different right away without him.

Characters have been gone on shows before, especially on this show, but the death of Otis was handled in such a way that it had an immediate impact. It was handled with dignity and not just to create season premiere drama.

And it was important to the overall architecture of the show. The series had been criticized, and rightfully so, for a lot of fake jeopardy for the last few seasons. Starting at the end of season 5, it had a lot of cliffhangers that resolved with absolutely no consequence.

So give credit to Derek Haas for hearing that criticism, recognizing the issue, and fixing it. Most TV shows wouldn’t pay that much attention to the audience, and even if they did, they don’t have to do anything because of it. Derek understood the point of view and made the show better, even if he had to do it in a really difficult and painful way.

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This was a tough moment for the series, perhaps one of the toughest, but it was also a big and important move and it means something that they did it.

Watch this week’s Chicago Fire highlight with the emotional reveal below, and let us know what you thought of this moment in the comments.

For the latest Chicago Fire season 8 spoilers and news, plus more on the entire series, follow the Chicago Fire category at One Chicago Center.