Spoilers ahead for the first nine episodes of Grey’s Anatomy Season 22. Stream the series with a Hulu subscription if you’re not caught up.
Over the past two decades, we’ve seen some pretty shocking deaths on Grey’s Anatomy, from McDreamy to the “horrifying” Lexie situation to the most recent loss on Season 22. In fact, the current season has put several of the Seattle surgeons knocking at death’s door, but how close were Meg Marinis and her writers to actually letting that door open? I’m aghast over the showrunner’s admission that there was even “a conversation” about killing off Richard Webber.
James Pickens Jr. is one of just two series regulars to be on all 22 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy so far (along with Chandra Wilson), so when his character Richard was diagnosed with prostate cancer, I have to admit I wasn’t too worried about his chances of survival. Meg Marinis laughed at the audacity it would take to kill off an OG, telling THR:
What do you think of me? You think I would consider killing Richard Weber?! We said, ‘Oh my god, what if we’re the writers room that killed Richard Weber?!’ (Laughs.) But it’s a writers room, so it’s always a conversation.
OK, despite the fact that the writers did apparently bring up the possibility of having Richard die, it doesn’t sound like Meg Marinis wants that to be part of her writers room’s legacy.
The episode in question — which introduced Richard’s late father in a dream sequence — was emotional enough without having to worry about the doc’s survival, and it sounds like that’s exactly what the showrunner was going for. It was the same thing, she said, with Jo Wilson (Camilla Luddington) and her twins, whose fates were cliffhanged in the fall finale. Meg Marinis said:
Jo was a conversation, and whether one of her babies died was a conversation. But it’s also that fine balance where audiences want to cry about something, but cry about something and then not having a terrible ending is something very cathartic — especially for people who are fans of a 22-season show. Our fans are here for our characters.
Grey’s Anatomy has gone dark, for sure, but it felt a little too extreme to think that the show would either kill off Jo and leave Atticus Lincoln (Chris Carmack) a single father of four, or that they’d take one of Jo and Link’s twins from them. I’m eternally grateful neither scenario came to fruition.
Speaking of Link, his near-death experience came only weeks before his wife’s, as he was critically injured in the hospital explosion that ended Season 21. However, while Chris Carmack teased fans over that cliffhanger, his character's injuries turned out to be a ruse to throw us off the scent of Monica Beltran’s impending doom, which set up Amelia Shepherd’s need for a sabbatical.
It’s obvious that Meg Marinis values her characters’ lives — and the emotional state of the fans — and even if the writers do have to at least have a conversation about killing people off, I'm relieved to hear they're in no hurry to get rid of Richard Webber. I assume the same is true of Chandra Wilson’s Miranda Bailey.
We’ve got a bit of a wait before Grey’s Anatomy continues, so go ahead and start a rewatch of your favorite era and then tune in for its return at 10 p.m. ET Thursday, February 26, on ABC and streaming the next day on Hulu.
