‘Chicago Fire’ Season 3 Spoilers: Who Died In The Premiere? EP Explains Why They Killed Off [SPOILER] In Episode 1

Talk about a red-hot premiere. “Chicago Fire” started its Season 3 with a bang on Tuesday, Sept. 23, when the show aired its first episode of the new season. During “Always” it was revealed which character was killed off from the beloved NBC drama. As we well remember, Season 2 of “Chicago Fire” ended with a major cliffhanger as a building erupted with flames, leaving the lives our of all heroes in peril.

So, who didn’t make it out of the building alive? Well, grab some tissues because things are about to get pretty devastating. After months of speculating it was revealed that Leslie Elizabeth Shay (Lauren German) was the one who was killed –- and in an extremely brutal fashion nonetheless.

Episode 1 kicked off right where Season 2 concluded, with Chief Boden (Eamonn Walker) radioing his crew to abort the mission due to an explosion in the building. Just then the ceiling caved in but it wasn’t until the smoke settled did tragedy present itself. The group found Gabby (Monica Raymund) attempting to perform CPR on Shay’s lifeless body, as a pool of blood laid underneath her head. Unless Gabby’s lungs were filled with magical air there’s no amount of resuscitation that could have saved one of the show’s most loved characters.

Michael Brandt and Derek Haas, creators of the NBC drama, then dug the knife in a little deeper when they gave viewers a flashback to Shay’s very first day at Firehouse 51.

But it wasn’t until Matt Olmstead explained why they decided to kill Shay off did the waterworks really begin. According to the EP, Shay’s death was solely meant to shake up the plot of “Chicago Fire” -- which is certainly did.

“At the end of season two, we were in the room talking about finales, cliffhangers and what was going to come with season three. I’ve been through it before on other shows, on ‘Prison Break,’ where you feel a little bit like you’ve exhausted some of the story lines and romances, enough people have slept with each other and you feel a little bit stuck,” he explained to Entertainment Weekly. “The conversation came up, ‘What about killing one of the characters?’ Not too far-fetched, because it’s one of the most dangerous jobs in America, working as a firefighter.”

According to Olmstead, that spark of an idea eventually ignited. “That started to gain traction because you invariably get a lot of material from the emotional ramifications. We started to map out what it would look like, who it would involve, and at a certain point we all looked around and said this is the way to go. Some people are going to be pissed off. Hopefully people are emotionally affected by the storyline. Having seen the episode after this, it’s pretty much what we had hoped for in terms of shaking things up and giving other characters story lines to play all because of this one event," he said.

Are you surprised that Shay was the one who was killed off in “Chicago Fire”? Sound off in the comments section below with your thoughts