Why did Michael O'Hare leave Babylon 5?

[JoeD80]

From talking with him that day and the answers he gave, for all intensive purpose he was returning to B5 for season two.

Even at the time of the announcement Joe said it he approached Michael about it first.

In the long run it doesn't matter and we'll never know. We can only assert our beliefs and mine is that WB was unhappy with his overall performance.

Well that's not a belief. It's flat-out wrong. WB did not have a problem with his performance. Michael did get a lot of pressure from various directions to play the Sinclair character one way or another, but that's a different thing.

This is pretty much how I've thought of it all since then. I remember reading Ellison or JMS later saying "it was all planned"

Ellison said he thought it might have been planned that way because it was Joe's story; but JMS absolutely never said that.