14 DAY TRIAL // Season 6 of “Grey’s Anatomy” ended the other night, when the season finale aired – definitely one that fans are unlikely to forget anytime soon. Writer Shonda Rhimes had long promised an episode that would change the entire game and, by all means, she more than delivered with what is already being described by fans as one of the most twisted and shocking season finales ever to air.
Speaking with Michael Ausiello of The Ausiello Files, the first thing that Rhimes admits is that she truly has a lot to answer for with fans. She knows watching the season 6 finale must have been hard for them, but, at the same time, she wants them to know that writing it wasn’t easy either. In fact, all the events from the past episodes led up to this one, which has turned out to be quite a twist in the story. As for what’s next, not even Rhimes can tell.
*Fans who have not seen the season finale yet are encouraged not to read any further than this – major spoilers ahead.
The last episode of season 6 sees the hospital turn into a major crime scene, with some characters being hurt and some even being killed off. Also now, Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) learns she’s pregnant, only to have a miscarriage at the end of the episode. She was never meant to keep the baby, Rhimes says, but her miscarriage is essential for the story because it helps her realize that what she wants from life is actually to be with Derek and have his children.
“It wasn’t necessarily all about the [miscarriage], but it was about Meredith Grey being truly happy. And for me, when you’re watching that storyline, when Meredith is having a miscarriage and she basically says, ‘I’m having a miscarriage. I need Lidocaine. Are you going to help me or not?,’ you realize how incredibly strong she is and how [tough] she’s being in that moment. To me, that’s the hero moment. If you don’t have that moment you don’t really have the story of Meredith Grey. The death of the exciting dream that she had been holding on to all day… I feel like you don’t ever know how much you want something until it’s been taken away from you. Meredith figured out in this episode how much she wanted to be with Derek, how much she wanted to be his wife, and how much she wanted to have his children,” Rhimes explains.
With such developments, it’s no wonder the writer was almost terrified by how fans might receive the finale. “I was very nervous because I felt like what was coming wasn’t territory that we’d ever covered before, and I didn’t know how the audience was going to take it. I feel like I got a lot of really good responses from it, and I feel like it was an emotional ride for everybody. I wanted it to feel a little bit like a stand-alone movie, and I think it did,” Rhimes says.
In the same interview with Ausiello, Shonda Rhimes also explains the direction the other characters on “Grey’s” might take in the upcoming season and why they needed to go through this particular experience. Please refer here for the entire interview.