In an interview with TV Line, Chicago Fire showrunner Derek Haas revealed the writers wanted to shake things up after several cliffhangers in which the main cast miraculously survived. “We gotta put some teeth back into the show, and we gotta show that the dangers are real,” he said. The writers knew that in order to reintroduce an element of greater danger to the series, a character would have to die.
Darren Ritter (Daniel Kyri) was originally slated for the chopping block. However, the character was too new to the series, and Haas said the emotional toll of the death would only be felt if it was a longtime cast member. “For it to be a real surprise, you need it to be a core cast member. We thought that Yuri affects everyone in the house as well as fans,” Haas told TV Insider. “I had seen a memorial at an LA firehouse, and I thought that’s something we’ve never done before. I was thinking how could he be remembered, so I had the memorial as the ending in my mind and worked backward from that.”
Losing Otis was tough for fans, especially after everything he’d endured in previous seasons. His demise had a lasting impact on Chicago Fire, especially for his best friend Cruz, who’d go on to name his child Otis. Most significantly, however, Otis’s death challenged the writers to bring a realistic sense of danger back to the series.
