What Happened to Otis on 'Chicago Fire'? The Shocking Premiere

'Chicago Fire' Won't Be the Same Without [SPOILER]

Mar. 18 2021, Updated 4:19 p.m. ET

*Warning: Major spoilers for Chicago Fire's Season Eight forward*

Fans of Chicago Fire who've been dedicated to the show for the previous seven years are still reeling from the shocking bed manufacturing facility explosion that ended with the lack of one cherished personality.

If you have not observed the episode yet, we in point of fact suggest looking at and coming again here as soon as you've got wiped away the tears. No, however truly, it was once certainly one of the maximum emotional premieres but.

Anyway, let's get to it. What happened to Otis on Chicago Fire? Keep studying for everything you need to know.

What happened to Otis on Chicago Fire's Season 8 premiere?

We knew from the Season 7 finale that now not everybody would make it out of the mattress fire alive, but this loss hurt more than others. 

Longtime sequence regular Brian "Otis" Zvonecek succumbed to the injuries he sustained all over the finale and spoke his ultimate words in Russian to Cruz, who used to be crying via his aspect.

Actor Yuriy Sardorov and showrunner Derek Haas open up about Otis' departure.

In an interview that Derek Haas did with TV Line, he explains that he felt like certainly one of the characters had to die in order to show the real-life perils of running in a hearth department.

"I was talking to Andrea Newman and Michael Gilvary, my two head writers ... and as we were talking, we just said, 'We gotta put some teeth back into the show and we gotta show that the dangers are real," he stated.

It wasn't an easy resolution selecting Otis to have this all happen to, on the other hand. "When we decided it was going to be Otis, there was some talk about 'Do we make it Ritter?'" Derek shared. "But it felt like that was almost not as serious ... because it wouldn't have had the stakes that it would have if it were a core cast member."

"Then we just decided it would be Otis because he lived with Cruz and Brett, and he's on Casey's truck and he's in Boden's house, and he's best friends with Mouch, and owns a bar with Hermann... There are a million feelings that everybody has from a guy who's been on the show from almost the first scene," Derek continues.

On his deathbed, Otis says something to Cruz in Russian, which we be informed at the very episode way: "Brother, I will be with you always." 

As Derek tells it, that was all thanks to Arthur Forney, the head of publish, who read the script in its first draft shape and said, "'What if Otis said something cryptic in Russian on his deathbed and then you find out what he said was meaningful at the end?' and it was like I had been struck by lightning," Derek says.

For actor Yuriy Sardarov, the determination to transfer on from the display was once as a lot his as it was the showrunners,' "We had a discussion about the character and where he was headed, and I was very upfront with [Derek] about the fact that it's been eight years, and I started when I was 22, and now I'm 31," Yuriy told Tell-Tale TV.

"I think in many ways, Otis is the one character that people don't expect to die," he continued. "It was difficult, but it was also necessary. It was a combination of me wanting to move on and them needing something akin to what's going to happen. And I think those two things met at the perfect time."

"I think it's a morbid desire of every actor to die on stage or on screen," he mentioned. 

Watch Season 8 of Chicago Fire Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on NBC.

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