When escapism was No. 1 on audiences’ most-wanted list, the 17th season of Grey’s Anatomy leaned in to the pandemic, putting its cast behind face shields and infecting Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) with coronavirus. But at the end of the two-hour Nov. 12, 2020, premiere, the sun came out: While real-world Mer lay comatose, another Mer was on a beach — and her late husband, Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey), last seen six seasons earlier, was calling her name. It’s a medical miracle more shocked fans didn’t require a doctor!
Who Was Involved
Dempsey, whose character had been misdiagnosed after a horrific car accident (doctors missed his brain bleed), made multiple appearances that season but was only the first in a line of cast favorites we’d sobbed goodbye to: Soon, T.R. Knight, a.k.a. formerly hapless intern George O’Malley, showed up on the beach. (He’d been gone more than a decade after being hit by a bus during a noble lifesaving effort.) A 2012 plane crash had claimed Meredith’s half-sister Lexie (Chyler Leigh) and then Mark Sloane (Eric Dane) — star-crossed loves who were finally, heartbreakingly, on the same page — but on Meredith’s beach, they found happiness. The last character we’d lost, Andrew DeLuca (Giacomo Gianniotti), had gone suddenly in that same season, stabbed by a sex trafficker he was pursuing.
Why We Remember It
The joy of seeing old friends — and our terror of possibly losing another. As Meredith’s condition grew increasingly dire, every interaction in this sand-and-surf limbo played on our fears. “Do I choose? Do I get to decide if I want to go back?” she asks George, who tells her, “I don’t know. I didn’t. I would’ve stayed, if I could’ve.”
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At one point, she and Derek laugh about the traditional wedding everyone around them wanted instead of those Post-it vows, and poof! their beach-casual clothes become aisle-ready. The depth of feeling between them is palpable — is she committing to stay with him? In the end, he insists, “It’s not time yet… You have to go.”
Dempsey told Variety: “I thought it was a beautiful way to close it. The intention was to really give people some hope because they are such an iconic couple. We’ve lost so many people this year, the thought that we’d have angels hovering around us, taking care of us, is a good message to send out in such a bleak world that we’re living in. So for all of us, it was a beautiful ending to this story.”
Key Details
Debbie Allen, who directed four episodes that season and also played Dr. Catherine Fox, tells Us how Dempsey’s return happened: “It was really a lot of Ellen Pompeo’s relationship with him that got him to come back. That speaks volumes of the family Shonda Rhimes has created with Grey’s Anatomy.” As to whether there was a big “family” celebration, she jokingly references the animated flick The Incredibles: “There’s a kid called Dash, because Dash goes faster than everybody else, and that is my nickname for Patrick Dempsey. And I just asked him to just slow down for a minute and give us a kiss? That’s all. He left.”
The Aftermath
Fall 2021: A title card popped up reading “This season, Grey’s Anatomy portrays a fictional postpandemic world, which represents our hopes for the future. In real life, the pandemic is still ravaging the medical community.”
A New Perspective
As recently as October, fans still greeted rumors of another Dempsey return to the drama with excitement…
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Where Are They Now?
… but those rumors were false. In January, the actor will play a hitman diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s in the new Fox thriller Memory of a Killer. Pompeo is, of course, alive and well on Grey’s, now in its 22nd season.
