Spoiler alert! Major spoilers ahead for the Grey’s Anatomy Season 22 finale, which aired May 7. The episode is available to stream with a Hulu subscription.
Grey’s Anatomy is known for leaving fans with some pretty brutal cliffhangers, especially on season finales. Think back to last year’s explosion, which led us to believe Link was dead, along with who knows how many others. Combine that with Camilla Luddington’s tease of “so many cliffhangers,” and I was ready for the Season 22 finale to be a bloodbath. I was wrong, and showrunner Meg Marinis had a good explanation for why she “needed” that ending.
So, despite the penultimate episode making us think Kevin McKidd’s Grey’s Anatomy exit might come by killing off Owen Hunt, nobody died in “Bridge Over Troubled Water” (not on-screen at least; the bridge collapse did result in several casualties, we were told). Owen saved himself and a family of four, while Nick Marsh pulled through a tough surgery and ended up ENGAGED to Meredith Grey! That’s a lot of joy for a Grey’s Anatomy finale, and apparently that was exactly the point, as Meg Marinis told THR:
I am still desperately searching for hope and everything outside of Grey’s Anatomy. ... I felt like we had experienced a lot of difficulty and I needed to end us in a place where I wasn’t having to mourn the physical life of anyone. We’re mourning emotional relationships and we’ll miss Owen and Teddy, but I needed to find hope in my stories.
She pointed out that we saw quite a bit of tragedy in Season 22 — Monica Beltran’s death, Lucas Adams losing Katie (still a big mistake in my book), Richard Webber’s cancer, Jo and Link both nearly dying, etc. So rather than teasing us with more death, Meg Marinis decided to cliffhang us on relationships and career decisions. She said:
We’re setting up a lot of complicated relationship drama. This was a season finale where I have shown that everybody is physically safe. But emotionally, everyone’s kind of in hot messes — besides Meredith and Nick.
We’ve known for a while that Meredith and Nick are endgame, so I wasn’t expecting to have such an emotional reaction to their decision to make it official.
We also got Owen making the right relationship decision (for once) by deciding to move to Paris with Teddy (Kim Raver) and the kids so she could accept the great job offer. Elsewhere in the hospital, however, the showrunner pointed out:
Blue doesn’t have a job. Jo doesn’t know if she wants a job and she’s still struggling postpartum, and we’ve got Link who’s taking pills. Bailey wants to get on the conversation. Amelia has just made the messiest of messy mistakes. Winston and Jules are about to be found out. So the hospital’s not blown up. Nobody’s died. But can anyone be in the same room with each other?
This was definitely not the finale I expected — I’m still waiting for Owen’s unchecked head laceration to come back to bite him — but I’m pleased that it proves cliffhangers don’t have to mean putting our heroes’ lives at risk to keep interest alive in the upcoming stories.
Grey’s Anatomy Season 23 promises a lot of relationship drama and possibly new beginnings and career changes for several of the surgeons. Until then, you can relive all 22 seasons on Hulu or revisit your favorite Grey’s Anatomy era from the first 21 seasons with a Netflix subscription.
