SPOILER ALERT: The story includes details about the Season 21 finale of Grey’s Anatomy, “How Do I Live.”
In a signature fashion, the Grey’s Anatomy Season 21 finale put the doctors at Grey Sloan through the wringer.
First, Jenna (Piper Perabo), the distraught mother of 9-year-old Dylan, resorted to extreme measures to try to save her daughter who continued to deteriorate following her brain surgery. Not willing to sit and wait as Amelia (Caterina Scorsone) advised her, Jenna took things into her own hands.
Using a tank with explosive gas from her husband’s work supply as a weapon, she forced Amelia to operate on her daughter to try and fix what didn’t work the first time. Amelia had to go lo-tech, relying on a magnifying glass and her instincts — with Lucas’ (Niko Terho) help — to perform the highly risky surgery. She was eventually joined by Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) for a throwback to the old days when the duo were performing surgical miracles together.
They delivered another one — saving Dylan’s life, which led to Jenna releasing Simone (Alexis Floyd), whom she had held hostage in the OR, before the mom surrendered to the S.W.A.T, team that had been called in.
That was one of two (!) impossible surgeries pulled off by the Grey Sloan doctors that day as Teddy (Kim Raver and Winston (Anthony Hill) saved from certain death Nora, Megan Hunt’s childhood friend with whom Owen (Kevin McKidd) slept during his and Teddy’s brief open marriage experiment.
The surgeries led to relationship epiphanies for Lucas and Teddy. Following the near-death experience, Lucas reconciled with Simone after seemingly breaking up with her in the previous episode. The panic on Simone’s face as Lucas told her “All I want is to be with you” and they embraced was clear indication of her regret over the one-night stand with the hot guy from the bar (Trevor Jackson) that she failed to mention.
The dire consequences of her actions became even more apparent when said hot guy was revealed as one of Grey Sloan’s new interns.
Meanwhile, Teddy effectively broke up with Owen after Nora’s surgery, telling him, “I’m choosing me” when he asked her “You’re giving up on us?”
In other developments, Bailey told Ben that Teddy had recommended his dismissal after his probation period. Clearly disappointed, Ben made the most of his remaining time at Grey Sloan, saving a patient’s life by performing a surgery outside of the OR which had been cordoned off by police over the tank explosion threat.
Meanwhile, Jo let it slip to Link that their twins are both girls and Meredith (Ellen Pompeo), who announced at the top of the finale that she was planning to sell her shares in Grey Sloan to fund her research, changed her mind, realizing how much she had missed being a surgeon. She opted to spend the school year working at the lab in Boston and the summers at Grey Sloan as a general surgeon.
Jules confronted short-lived mentor Winston about him no longer working with her.
“We were spending a lot of time together, and lines were getting blurry,” Winston said, to which Jules responded, “The lines may have been blurry to you, they were very clear to me.”
And when everything at Grey Sloan seemed to be back to normal — relationship drama notwithstanding — Richard and Kwan realized that Jenna may have released the gas, possibly accidentally. As Kwan ran to warn the teams in the OR, with a number of other doctors, including Bailey, seen in the hallway and Link taking a saw-like tool to a patient’s leg on the operating table, Meredith was seen outside the hospital as it was ripped by an explosion.
In an interview with Deadline, Grey’s Anatomy showrunner Meg Marinis, who wrote the finale, discusses the fiery cliffhanger and whose lives are in danger. She addresses the possibility for Ben to appeal his dismissal and dissects the dissolution of Teddy and Owen’s marriage, Lucas and Simone’s complicated reconciliation as well as Winston and Jules’ questionable professional relationship.
She reveals whether Jackson will continue on Grey’s next season, promises resolution of the finale’s big medical cases and teases a storm on the horizon for Jo and Link as well as how Meredith’s new work arrangement will play out.
Explosion’s aftermath
DEADLINE: This was a classic Grey’s Anatomy finale ending. Talk about the decision to go with an explosion and who may be in danger. I’m trying to remember when the last time was when we had an explosion finale cliffhanger that left so many lives in limbo.
MARINIS: Probably the last time we did an explosion, it was a fire at the end of Season 13, that’s the last one I can remember. But the decision to do an explosion at the end, we loved the way we did it: that you think everybody is in peril the entire episode, and then everything seems okay, and then, in an old-school Grey’s way, we pull that rug from underneath everybody.
I think that it’s going to be really fun to pick all that back up. That’s the best way to end Grey’s Anatomy, where everybody’s lives could be at stake. Everybody was in that hospital, except for two people, Meredith and Ben. I think we can probably say that Jo had left the hospital, she was on her leave. But if they weren’t outside the hospital, they’re there. Everybody is up for grabs, it’s fun. I won’t comment on if anyone is harmed beyond repair, but it is the best kind of cliffhanger, with the fans screaming at their TVs.
DEADLINE: The last thing we saw was Link holding that grinding tool that can create sparks. You are not going to leave two unborn girls without a father, right? You’re not that heartless.
MARINIS: Well, that story is such a great story in the finale because you think, they get married and then they have this lovely blissful storyline where they’re completely oblivious to what’s going on. And so that was all very intentional to just sucker punch the fans, because that’s what we do so well here. But no, nobody wants those two unborn girls to be fatherless, but everyone’s just going to have to tune in to see if Link was in the part of the hospital that went kaboom.
DEADLINE: I believe the main cast all have deals for next season, which doesn’t mean anything, because I don’t think you have picked up their options yet. Will this ending inform how you proceed with asking actors to come back?
MARINIS: We haven’t gotten back into the writers room yet, we will in less than a week. There’s always the possibility that, with an ending like this, someone might not come back. But I’m going to make you guys wait and see what happens.
Ben’s fate
DEADLINE: It’s ironic that Ben is one of those couple of doctors whose lives are safe. Yet he is not safe from leaving the show. What can you say about him? It feels unjust for him to be thrown out, especially after his heroics in the finale, but it seems like that’s what Teddy wants.
MARINIS: Teddy had a really difficult year. It’s really hard to be a woman in power, especially in medicine, and I think she felt like she didn’t get the attention and the respect, not only from Ben, but also from her husband. I think she felt like he questioned her sometimes as chief and everything. I don’t feel like she felt like people were seeing her at her level that she needed to be.
And who knows, maybe she made that decision about Ben because she was having such a tough year, and now that she’s finally realized who she can be, necessarily, without Owen, or now that she’s accomplished the unachievable in that surgery with Nora, and now that what has happened to her hospital, who knows? Ben may have an appeal to be made here.
DEADLINE: it happened with Lucas. It took a whole season, but he was able to get Katherine to change her mind.
MARINIS: And I think what Lucas did was worse.
Teddy & Owen
DEADLINE: Absolutely. And since we’re on Teddy, let’s talk about her personal arc this season. It felt like Grey’s was constantly trying to break off Teddy and Owen; it was such a difficult season for them as a couple. Where are they now, is this the end? Can that couple survive what they went through?
MARINIS: Well, they’ve never had an easy relationship. People said that this season was such a tough season for them, and I think it’s because we focused on it a little bit more. But I feel like in seasons past, they’ve always had a little bit of difficulty.
What we wanted to do is tell the true story of a marriage of two working parents who have high stress jobs. If they’re both not completely dedicated to each other in their relationship and taking time to really see what both are lacking from one another, it doesn’t work. They tried, and of course, the open marriage experiment often does not go the way that it everyone thinks it will go.
I’m sure it works for some people, but for a lot of people I’ve seen that it does not. That’s what happened with Owen and Teddy. And I think we also saw them both get something that they clearly needed from other people, whether that was through Nora or through Cass.
I love the speech that Teddy gives Owen in the finale. Does that mean she’ll never choose him again? No, of course, there’s never an end of all ends on Grey’s Anatomy, but I do feel like they will be apart for a second.
DEADLINE: And Teddy being gone for hours. Is it something that we need to be concerned about? She didn’t look suicidal or anything but still, she is unaccounted for too.
MARINIS: I feel like we should be concerned about everybody if you didn’t see where they are at the very end of the episode.
DEADLINE: In terms of other people, will we see Nora and Sophia Bush’s Cass again? Are they still in the picture for Owen and Teddy or have you closed those arcs?
MARINIS: I hope to see both of those characters again. They’re such lovely women, and we love having them. Obviously, we still need to get to the writers room. But also, because of the way we left Nora’s character, it would feel odd not to see her wake up from that or at least be alive after that amazing surgery that Teddy did.
As for Sophia Bush’s character, Cass, she was such an electric character, so I really hope we do see it again. Obviously, she was in a happy marriage, she just had an open marriage. So she currently is not in the market for a new relationship. But Sophia Bush is great, I would really hope to have her back on the show again.
DEADLINE: And will Teddy explore her sexuality more next season?
MARINIS: In her life, she has been with men and women. So I think she’ll explore whoever comes into her orbit that she has an attraction to. But when you come to a point where your marriage might end, I think she’s going to take some time first for herself to see who she is when she puts herself first.
The open marriage experiment
DEADLINE: Teddy and Owen’s open marriage storyline has been polarizing. How much did you discuss it in the writers room and portraying the different sexes reacting differently as Owen slept with someone the same night while Teddy couldn’t go through with it.
MARINIS: I discussed it at length with Kim and Kevin; Kim and Kevin and I actually have a table at Joe’s Bar where we have our story conversations. Kim, Kevin and the writers, we discussed at length the storyline in the writers room, because it’s so nuanced and people have such strong opinions on it, whether it’s a good idea, whether it’s a bad idea. We read several articles from the New York Times about people with open marriages.
These are two characters who you really would not think would do it, so there was a lot of nuance, there was a lot of discussion. There was a lot of like, oh my gosh, you believe that? It was one of those stories that definitely had a lot of opinions. But I felt really good where we ended up, especially of where we took Nora’s character, and that Teddy ended up saving Nora’s life at the end.
That, to me, is a thing that we actually have never done on Grey’s Anatomy. Someone has never had to save the life of the woman who slept with your husband on the table with a surgery that has never been done before. And that surgery is a real surgery, we worked with our USC heart surgeon to portray that. It was a huge Hail Mary, and I was so happy to see Teddy pull it off.
Lucas & Simone
DEADLINE: Lucas and Simone also went through a lot of ups and downs as a couple this season. How many times would Simone push him away and he keeps coming back? At some point it gets sad, and obviously she now has that big secret with the new intern, which is going to come out at some point, this is Grey’s. Talk about their dynamic.
MARINIS: In [Episode] 17, he pushes her away. And if they weren’t in a life and death situation in Episode 18, I don’t know if he necessarily would have come back. When you’re in a life and death situation, you make rash decisions, and I think it’ll be really fun to explore. I think the addition of Trevor Jackson in those last two episodes makes it up in such a different way.
His character is so different from Lucas, and it will really be fun to see what happens when Lucas finds out. And if this character is potentially working at Grey Sloan, it’s going to be messy in so many different ways. Not only is he considered a year below them, but also he’s got a confidence in his character that I think a lot of interns do not have.
DEADLINE: This is such a Grey’s trope, I’m sure you did it with full awareness. It was a throwback to Derek and Meredith’s one-night stand in the pilot. Same thing happened with Jules and Link when she was starting. Is this something you like to revisit with new characters?
MARINIS (laughs): Oh, absolutely. There’s only one bar in Seattle, Nellie. It’s Joe’s Bar.
DEADLINE: Trevor Jackson has an option to become a series regular. I think he made an impression in those last two episodes. Are you happy with how his character played out? Will we see him again next season?
MARINIS: We were extremely happy the way that he played out. We were really looking for a confident, arrogant guy to go in there, so we were very happy. Trevor is great, we will see him again.
DEADLINE: You introduced us to only one of the incoming interns. Will we get to see them, will you be adding more interns next season?
MARINIS: We don’t know yet. Are we adding a bunch of new series regulars? No, we’ve got a very full cast who we love, and we have plenty of story for them. But it’s not that we won’t, sometimes, as we’ve done in the past seasons, have guests pop in different storylines. There’s a possibility of meeting those other interns, but not in such significant ways.
Winston & Jules
DEADLINE: Speaking of Grey’s tropes, Winston and Jules’ uncomfortable “blurred lines” storyline. The way it played out, it didn’t look like one-one way traffic, there seemed to be some fluctuation on her end, but Jules made it clear in the finale that it was strictly business. Was that how we were supposed to read it? Was their attraction mutual or not?
MARINIS: Well, I think if you watch carefully, she pauses before she says, “The lines were very clear for me.” And so I think, based on what we’ve seen actually over the past two seasons — because I feel like these two characters have had a little chemistry between them, not even in this season — I think that one, Jules is so passionate about her work and learning as a doctor, that she’s a little too in with the job. And that can be confusing for people. But also, I think Winston Ndugu, look at him. He is an attractive man, he’s brilliant, he saves lives, and he wants to teach her. It’s hard not to fall for that, right?
But I think what we’re trying to do here is show the evolution of Grey’s. In the beginning, it was Meredith and Derek, and we didn’t talk about that being problematic, but 21 years later, we’re now talking about how it is a problem to have an attraction to someone who is considered a mentee, and you’re not supposed to have a romantic relationship between mentor and mentee.
So we see Winston own that and do the right thing, and you see the consequences, how much it sucks to be the other person in that situation who is Jules. It really, really sucks because you have an attraction to me, I can’t learn the way that I wanted to learn. It is messy, it is a little icky, but we wanted to call out the icky because we wanted to show how times have changed.
DEADLINE: Is there a future for Jules and Winston in their current dynamic? It seems like it’s a no-go, but can they find a way? Or will Winston find somebody else he can have non-complicated romance with?
MARINIS: Because of the decision he made and how reluctant he was to tell her that he was making this decision, I think he’s going to try to do the right thing and resist and only have a strictly teacher-student relationship. But we’ll just have to know that it’s Grey’s Anatomy, so it’s going to be difficult.
Link & Jo
DEADLINE: You mentioned Jo and Link’s blissful recent storyline. I feel like something bad is going to happen, obviously she is unaware yet of the explosion. What do you have in store for them?
MARINIS: I can’t speak much about the story that we have coming down the pipeline but I will say, she’s very pregnant with multiples, that’s always dangerous in itself, to be a woman who is having twins. She’s doing great so far, but obviously she had a complication earlier on this season, and I think that this was, the way I put it is, I feel like this is a calm before another storm for them.
Meredith, Nick & Amelia’s future
DEADLINE: Meredith’s decision in the finale to split her time between Boston and Seattle. How will that work? You don’t have Ellen full time but how much do you hope and expect to see her next season?
MARINIS: First, we love Ellen, and we were so happy to watch her get her star [on the Hollywood Walk of Fame] a couple of weeks ago. It was a really amazing honor, and she deserves it.
For her storyline, we hope to see her in Seattle. I loved, I love talking about her research but we have stay true to reality with the research and so, while we’ll still keep her research alive, I miss seeing Meredith in the OR, and I miss seeing her teach, especially since they have this new class of interns. So that was behind it, how can we see Meredith also back on the OR, because when you see her in the OR save the day in the finale, it’s nostalgic, right? Seeing her with patients, mothers.
Ideally, we’ll get to see a little bit more of that as well as keeping her research alive because it is so important. And I think we introduced something really topical, with her shining a light that a lot of neurological research is only done on male mice. We do want to continue that because it’s so, so relevant right now.
DEADLINE: And Nick is still in the picture with Scott Speedman potentially coming back?
MARINIS: Obviously, deals haven’t been made yet, but we love Scott, and his character Nick and Meredith are still together. He was also at the star ceremony supporting Ellen, so it was really great to see. Oh, and the fans were so excited to see him there with her.
DEADLINE: You mentioned seeing Meredith back in the OR in the finale. Will we see the end of that storyline to find out how Dylan is doing, did she wake up, and what happened to Jenna who caused all that mayhem and will she be charged with manslaughter should anyone die in the explosion.
MARINIS: I hope to inform everybody what happens. The how hasn’t been figured out yet, but we need to know how Dylan does after that because she was such a great patient for us. The end of Episode 16 when she doesn’t wake up, that was such a powerful ending to that episode, and I feel like that is a very iconic Grey’s old-school medical case. So I hope for everyone to see how Dylan does.
DEADLINE: What about Amelia next season? She is overdue for a strong arc, she didn’t have a lot to do this season.
MARINIS: For Amelia, we see the climax of her impossible case arc. She was very medical this season. We’ll see if her strive and desire to keep taking on medical cases, we’ll see if that continues after what happens to Dylan. I think that’s a moment of hubris for her. She took on something that, there’s a possibility she shouldn’t have operated on that girl to begin with.
DEADLINE: That happens a lot on Grey’s a lot of impossible cases, a lot of first, surgeries that have never been done. What’s with that hospital? It feels like they have the best surgeons in the world.
MARINIS: We’re groundbreaking, Nellie!
The post ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Delivers Explosive Season 21 Finale Cliffhanger: EP Meg Marinis On Lives In Danger, Couples At Crossroads, New Cast Addition & More appeared first on Deadline.
