It’s time to bring back Seattle Grace Mercy Death.
Since its early seasons, Grey’s Anatomy has earned a Game of Thrones-esque reputation for killing off fan-favorites. From George O’Malley (T.R. Knight) being dragged by a bus to Lexie Grey (Chyler Leigh) being crushed under the wing of a plane, Grey’s has shown a penchant for making us fall in love with characters and then offing them in any number of horrifying ways. However, in the last few seasons, Grey’s has toned down its merciless massacring of beloved doctors — and the show has suffered for it.
The haunting potential that we could, at any moment, be left reeling from the loss of a great character used to be one of the things that kept this iconic medical drama interesting after so many years, and without it, Grey’s Anatomy feels like it’s lost its stakes. These days, when characters fall into comas or fall off cliffs, it’s hard to care because we know that they’re probably going to be okay anyway. Similarly, the Season 19 finale teased the death of Teddy Altman after a toothache-turned-cardiac arrest, but with Kim Raver announced as part of the returning cast for this season, it’s unlikely that she’ll be the next doctor on the chopping block. If Grey’s wants to keep us caring for the rest of its God-knows-how-long run on the air, that means keeping us on our toes. Unfortunately, this leaves only one good option to up the ante for Season 20 of Grey’s Anatomy: we must sacrifice an intern.
Grey’s Anatomy
A drama centered on the personal and professional lives of five surgical interns and their supervisors.
‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Likely Won’t Kill Bailey, Richard, or Meredith
But why does it have to be an intern who dies in Season 20 of Grey’s Anatomy? There are a few reasons. Firstly, it’s widely known that very few Grey’s originals remain on the show. It’s basically Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson), Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.), and now occasionally, Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) herself. We know they aren’t going to kill Meredith (she’s proven herself to be virtually indestructible), and given that they’re the only true tethers to the early years, it would be a bold and likely disastrous move to take out the beloved Bailey or Richard. On the flip side, killing off a polarizing long-time character like Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd) would (at least for some) be a welcome surprise rather than a heart-wrenching blow.
There are a few other Grey’s alums that could be taken off the board, like Jo Wilson (Camilla Luddington), Atticus “Link” Lincoln (Chris Carmack), or Amelia Shepherd (Caterina Scorsone), but given that Jo and Link just started a long-awaited romance and all three are new parents, it would be kind of a low blow — even for Grey’s Anatomy — to kill them right now.
Season 19 of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Introduced Great New Interns
Meanwhile, this newest class of interns is the best we’ve had in years, and it’s not a coincidence that they’re very reminiscent of the M.A.G.I.C (Meredith, Alex (Justin Chambers), George, Izzie (Katherine Heigl), Cristina (Sandra Oh)) group of interns the show started with. While they’re not carbon copies, this new gang, including Doctors Jules Millin, Lucas Adams, Simone Griffith, Mika Yasuda, and Benson “Blue” Kwan (M.A.G.Y.K?), feels a lot like the first ones we fell in love with — they even reference a feeling of “magic” after their first day at work.
When we first meet this new group, they’re introduced as the “second chance” residents, aka doctors who either didn’t match anywhere else or got kicked out of their programs before being invited to Grey Sloan Memorial. Immediately, the young doctors feel like those we met in the pilot nearly twenty years ago, with Millin (Adelaide Kane) realizing that she’s had a one-night stand with an attending at the hospital (sound familiar?), Adams (Niko Terho) struggling with his secret nepo-baby status as Derek (Patrick Dempsey) and Amelia’s nephew, and Kwan (Harry Shum Jr.) sliding easily into the role of snarky bad-boy. Yasuda (Midori Francis) sports an offputting and macabre sense of humor, and Griffith (Alexis Floyd) is struggling to take care of her grandmother, who is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Adams kicks off his internship with a 007-style medical mishap and then vomits like his Auntie Meredith did on her first day, and Yasuda, Adams, and Griffith even wind up living in Meredith’s old house. These interns share the competitive streak that the originals did, banter and bond with the same electric chemistry, and make Grey’s feel like Grey’s again.
While it would be easy to try and connect each of these new interns directly with those of the original class, they all serve as more of a lovable amalgam of what made Meredith, Alex, George, Izzie, and Cristina so great. It seems as though remnants of our original interns were directly imbued into these new characters in a fresh way, and as the season goes on, we can continue to find traces of our past favorites weaved into these still-totally-original characters. Among the group are plenty of strained familial relationships and a deep (although sometimes hidden) need for a feeling of belonging, which, of course, they find in each other. This new cast has made the latest season of Grey‘s Anatomy feel both nostalgic and invigorating. But, we all know what happened the first time we got this close to a class of interns.
‘Grey’s Anatomy’s New Interns Might Foreshadow Tragedy
Apart from the devastating death of adored patient Denny Duquette (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), most Grey’s Anatomy fans recall the first, most traumatic death on the show being George O’Malley. Getting violently hit by a bus at the end of Season 5 before being officially declared brain-dead in the Season 6 premiere, George’s death was a tragic wake-up call that, within the hallowed halls of Seattle Grace Hospital, nobody was safe. This was only further proven when, two years later, Lexie Grey and Mark Sloan (Eric Dane) were both killed off following a plane crash. However, with George being the show’s first big death and the newest group of interns feeling so much like the first, it does give a foreboding sense that this shiny set of new recruits is headed for a similar fate.
Furthermore, Grey’s has proven in the past that killing interns works. In the first two episodes of Season 10, the show came back swinging by killing the promising intern, Heather Brooks (Tina Majorino). Leaning into Grey’s love of painful irony, the young neuro-prodigy suffered a catastrophic head injury and was soon declared brain-dead. Now, Heather was not a particularly loved character on the show. Dubbed “Mousy” by Cristina, Dr. Brooks was just kind of… there. She was a kind, somewhat off-putting oddball who didn’t make that much of an impression on the series — that is, until she died. Heather’s death shook the staff, not only because her death was inadvertently fellow intern Shane Ross’s (Gaius Charles) fault, but because, as an intern, she represented unrealized potential and a life taken far too soon. She also became a source of bonding for the other members of her class as they realized that they had to stick together to overcome the tragedy, and the ripples of her death were felt for a while. An intern that honestly, nobody really even liked, became a turning point for the season through her untimely death.
The past few groups of interns haven’t had a lasting impact, with Levi Schmitt (Jake Borelli), Taryn Helm (Jaicy Elliot), and Jo pretty much being the only ones left standing (they literally had one recent season where they wrote off pretty much every intern, and they were never heard from again.) With such an excellent new cast of interns having been brought in for Season 19, the showrunners have set themselves up for the perfect opportunity to rip the rug out from under us and break our hearts like only Grey’s Anatomy can do. As we spent last season watching Griffith, Yasuda, Millin, Kwan, and Adams fight over surgeries, have living room picnics, and yes, obviously, get it on in the on-call rooms, it feels like a joyous return to form that, in true TV-drama fashion, must come crashing down. If Grey’s wants to earn back its reputation for exemplary, pulse-pounding drama, it needs to learn how to shock us once again. For better or worse, this means that they need to take risks, make bold choices, and, unfortunately, kill a few interns.
Grey’s Anatomy is available to stream on Hulu in the U.S. Season 20 premieres March 14 on ABC.
