SPOILER ALERT: The story includes details about the two-part Season 19 finale of Grey’s Anatomy, “Wedding Bell Blues” and “Happily Ever After?”
Grey’s Anatomy wrapped its nineteenth season with a two-part finale packed with many hallmarks of the series, including love confessions, hookups, heartache, a runaway bride and a cliffhanger ending with lives hanging in the balance. It also marked a return of the two longtime cast members who departed as series regular earlier this season, Ellen Pompeo and Kelly McCreary, whose Meredith and Maggie, reunited with Nick and Winston, respectively, for much needed closure (and at least one happy ending.)
The finale also symbolized the passing of the baton from outgoing longtime Grey’s showrunner Krista Vernoff to new showrunner Meg Marinis, who will be taking the reins next season. The two co-wrote Part 1 of the finale, directed by series star Kevin McKidd, while Marinis penned solo Part 2, directed by Grey’s executive producer and recurring guest star Debbie Allen.
Part 1’s title, Wedding Bell Blues, pretty much sums up the episode. Simone tried to go through with her wedding to Trey despite her having feelings for Lucas and Lucas having professed his love to her – and despite the universe sending her signs in the form of a wedding dress zipper malfunction and a dead red robin. (It was her mom’s favorite bird so when a robin had showed up at her first date with Trey, she had taken it as a seal of approval from her late mother.)
In the end, Simone did get cold feet while literally walking down the aisle. In a scene straight out of a romantic movie, she ran, in her flowing wedding gown, to the hospital — and in Lucas’ arms — as the two went straight to the break room for some alone time.
Their bliss didn’t last because in Part 2 of the finale, Trey was admitted to Grey Sloan with a fractured arm, potentially jeopardizing his surgical career. The jilted groom had gotten in a traffic accident while chasing Simone to the hospital to talk to her. He proceeded to punch Lucas in the face with his good arm, with Simone left devastated.
“I hurt people,” she said, again pulling away from Lucas.
Winston, Nick, Bailey, Amelia, Richard and Catherine flew on a private jet to Boston for the Catherine Fox awards where Nick, as well as Winston and Maggie were nominated. All were left shaken by severe turbulence, which made Winston and Amelia finally stop bickering over Winston and Maggie’s separation and hold hands. The fear of dying also tempted Richard to have a drink and convinced Nick that he had to give his relationship with Meredith one more try. Nick ran to Meredith’s house where a handsome man opened the door to tell him that she was at work.
Meredith indeed was at the lab where she delivered a bombshell to her former co-workers — she wanted to challenge previous Alzheimer’s Research, discrediting Derek’s work in the process, with a new take on what causes the disease. They all advised her to keep this quiet for now to protect her funding and her reputation.
But at the awards show, when Meredith was introduced to major donors, she blurted out her revolutionary – and controversial – theory, possibly jeopardizing her financing.
At the ceremony, Meredith also presented the Catherine Fox award, which did not go to any of the nominees but to a stunned Bailey for her work “protecting reproductive rights and training the next generation of doctors on how to perform reproductive care.”
Nick, Winston and Maggie didn’t mind. Maggie, sporting a glossy new haircut, and Winston had just had sex, picking up where they had left off before the breakup and looking very much in love to the delight of fans after some ugly fights earlier this season. But just as the two seemed like they might get back together, Winston brought up getting divorced because “I want to excel at my job,” he said. Maggie put a pin in it for the moment, with the two remaining “married but apart” and in a much better place in their relationship than their final months in Seattle.
Meanwhile, Meredith and Nick had the type of heart to heart fans had been pining over for months, since their disastrous farewell meeting and the heartbreaking followup phone call. Meredith went to Nick’s hotel to slip him a note under the door. He opened the door and told her about his near death experience on the plane, which “made me realize how badly I want to live… live a whole life with love and mess and pain and you.”
Unlike the last time on the plane, when Meredith pretended she didn’t hear when Nick told her he loved her and hung up, she reciprocated his feelings. With the two eyeing a possible future together in Boston, they may be the answer to the “Happily Ever After?” question from the finale Part 2’s title. And the guy who opened the door at Meredith’s house – turned out he was her daughter’s tutor, and he also happened to be gay.
Another set of longtime star-crossed Grey’s lovers, Link and Jo, finally revealed their feelings for each other at the very end of Part 2. Link was the one who professed his love first after he couldn’t take it anymore, having suffered for days watching Jo flirt with their hunky patient Sam.
Speaking of Sam, he found himself on the operating table bleeding profusely in the final seconds of the finale, with Lucas refusing to wait for an attending and stepping up to perform the surgery in an eerie throwback to last season’s episode where Levi took a similar risk, which didn’t pay off, and his patient died.
Sam’s fate was left in limbo, along with that of the attending who was supposed to lead the surgery, Teddy.
Overworked as the new chief, she never found the time to go see a dentist for a debilitating toothache that had been bothering her during the entire two-part finale. In the end, she collapsed in the ER, with Owen rushing to her side and trying to revive her with a defibrillator.
While Teddy’s life is in grave danger, as Deadline revealed earlier today, Kim Raver, who plays her, along with fellow longtime Grey’s cast members James Pickens Jr. (Richard), Chandra Wilson (Bailey), Kevin McKidd (Owen), Camilla Luddington (Jo) and Caterina Scorsone (Amelia), have signed on to continue on the show next season.
In other developments from the Grey’s finale, Jules and Kwan took their love-hate relationship to another level when he ignored the DNR and DNI requests of Jules’ beloved roommate Max — and ended up saving her life.
He was emboldened to do that after sticking his neck out for a single mother accused of giving her little boy fentanyl and winning that battle, with the mom cleared of wrongdoing and her son making a recovery.
Mika had a good day at the office – asserting herself at the hospital while also finding love as she and Helm kissed to become official as a couple.
Richard and Amelia were both feeling overwhelmed after the severe turbulence on the plane and Meredith’s daring theory. Needing support, Amelia left to find an AA meeting while Richard was last seen staring at a vodka tonic he had ordered.