‘Chicago Fire’ Star Yuri Sardarov Bids Farewell to Fans on Instagram After Devastating Season 8 Premiere

Chicago Fire star Yuriy Sardarov has some words for fans following Wednesday night’s heartbreaking season premiere. The 31-year-old, who remained quiet while the episode aired, took to social media on Thursday morning to address the shocking development.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for Chicago Fire Season 8 premiere.

After fans mourned the death of Brian “Otis” Zvoneck, played by Sardarov, as a result of a factory explosion, the actor shared a message with his Instagram followers. In the post, which is a poem titled “Adieu,” he wrote, “A fond farewell to Otis/ he’ll forever be my friend/ And to all of you that knew him/ and loved him to the end/ He had a bushy mustache/ and a soul patch to boot/ It’s never really over/ he’ll always love you too.”

“Thank you for the greatest 7 years of my life…” Sardarov captioned the post, along with the hashtag, “#ChicagoFireForever.”

Many of his followers sent compliments his way for his job portraying the character, also mourning the loss of Otis.

“Congrats on an fantastic run! I can’t wait to see what you are up to next!!!!” one Instagram user wrote.

“crying,” another said.

“it hurts so much [sad emoticon],” someone else wrote.

“Why?! My friend, why?!” one person said.

“We will miss you!” another wrote.

“You will be missed thank you for being part of the show,” someone else said.

Wednesday night’s season premiere, which picked up after the Season 7 finale cliffhanger, saw Otis fail to make it to safety amid an equipment explosion. Despite Cruz (Joe Minoso) finding him via his SOS alert, Otis died at the hospital with severe burns. Fans were distraught to see the beloved character go, taking to social media to react to the gut-punch.

Although it’s not much consolation to heartbroken fans, Chicago Fire co-creator and showrunner Derek Haas told Entertainment Tonight that while the decision to write Otis off was difficult, it had to happen to move the story forward.

“It’s been a long time since we had a main character go,” he said.

“I’ve known Yuriy since before Chicago Fire, since he was a junior in college,” Haas revealed. “We did a movie together that I wrote and produced back in 2011. He’s a great guy. But you think, ‘OK, what can I do that’s going to really put some teeth back into this show, in terms of these dangerous situations that we put our characters in?’ And you can only write them in and out of corners so many times before the audience just stops caring about the situation.”

Haas continued, saying Otis’ death will effect everyone on the crew.

“We didn’t want to just write it off in the first episode and then forget that he existed. That’s not real life and that’s not the way it works,” Haas said. “So this time, I think even more so than we’ve done in previous iterations, we wanted to see how this affects different people in different ways and over a period of time.”

“Playing off that notion of tragedy takes time before you can get to the other side of it emotionally. That clock is different for different people. The way it affects Joe Cruz, his best friend and roommate, is going to be different than the way it affects Boden, who was his chief, and the way it affects Casey, who is his captain. And the way it affects Brett, who was also his roommate.

“To see those different elements and not cheapen them, and really make it have lasting effects, that’s what we’re doing,” he said.

Chicago Fire airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.

Photo credit: Pascal Le Segretain / Staff / Getty