This article contains a description of mass violence.
If you've ever watched even a minute of Shonda Rhimes' long-running medical drama "Grey's Anatomy," there's something really alarming about it that I'd like to bring to your attention — the fatality rate amongst the show's fictional doctors. Remember on "ER," when Paul McCrane's Dr. Robert Romano got crushed by a falling helicopter after losing one of his arms to the blade of an entirely different helicopter?! Yeah, that scene walked so "Grey's Anatomy"
could run in front of a proverbial bus.
I'll circle back to the bus thing in a second, so don't you worry. What I'm trying to say is that, as various characters leave the world of "Grey's Anatomy" behind, some of them get thoughtful exits that point towards a hopeful future. Probably the best exit, as of this writing, is that of Dr. Cristina Yang, the standout cardiothoracic surgeon played by Sandra Oh, who's offered a life-changing opportunity to lead a prestigious surgery research center in Switzerland and moves away at the end of season 10. Others, like Justin Chambers' long-running character Dr. Alex Karev, receive unpopular and unceremonious write-offs ... but at least they survive the wrath of the Grim Reaper, a nickname you could use for Rhimes herself. As for these actors (and their characters) who departed the show, Rhimes — and her future replacement as showrunner, Krista Vernoff — chose violence.
Again, I cannot stress this enough: in a world where Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital (née Seattle Grace Hospital) existed, I would warn any physician who considered taking a job there, because not only do a bunch of the doctors die, but pretty much all of them almost die. These fine surgeons endure plane crashes, mass shootings, bombs in body cavities, near-drownings, electrical storms, and other very cinematic disasters, and most of them live to tell the tale. As for the ones that don't, here are seven of the stupidest ways doctors have died on "Grey's Anatomy."
Read more: 15 Best TV Shows That Were Canceled After Only One Season
Dr. Charles Percy & Dr. Reed Adamson
In season 6 of "Grey's Anatomy," Seattle Grace merges with a nearby hospital, Mercy West, which introduces some new residents into the mix. Some of those residents, like Dr. Jackson Avery (Jesse Williams) and Dr. April Kepner (Sarah Drew), end up sticking around to become main members of the cast, but others aren't so lucky ... so how do they perish? In a horrific shooting, actually.
These deaths are not, I should say, "stupid." They're actually very sad, and one is especially shocking. In the two-part finale of season 6 — "Sanctuary" and "Death and All His Friends" — Gary Clark (Michael O'Neill), the husband of a former patient, shows up at the recently renamed Seattle Grace-Mercy West Hospital with a grievance and a gun, intending to shoot a group of doctors who followed his wife's end-of-life directive after a surgery created complications and put her on life support. Despite that his late wife asked to be removed from the life support, Gary has scores to settle with Dr. Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.), Dr. Lexie Grey (Chyler Leigh), and the chief of surgery at the time, Dr. Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey), but as he tries to find his way through the labyrinthine hospital to Derek's office, he encounters Dr. Reed Adamson (Nora Zehetner), one of the new residents from Mercy West. Impatient and stressed, Reed says she's a "tour guide, not a surgeon" before Gary shoots her between the eyes.
Later in the episode, after shooting Alex Karev and killing unnamed doctors and nurses, Gary storms into a patient room belonging to Mary Portman (guest star Mandy Moore), where surgeons Dr. Charles Percy (Robert Baker) and Dr. Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson) are hiding. Miranda lies and says she's a nurse, but Charles admits he's a surgeon, and Gary shoots him before leaving. Reed's death is brutally quick, but on the flip side, Charles' death takes forever as Miranda and Mary try and fail to save his life. "Sanctuary" and "Death and All His Friends" are two genuinely great dramatic episodes of television, and Charles and Reed's deaths are stark examples of the horrors of gun violence, even when you're surrounded by excellent doctors.
If you have been impacted by incidents of mass violence, or are experiencing emotional distress related to incidents of mass violence, you can call or text Disaster Distress Helpline at 1-800-985-5990 for support.
Dr. Andrew DeLuca
After showing up at the very end of season 11 as a new intern, Giacomo Gianniotti's Dr. Andrew DeLuca became a main member of the ever-expanding "Grey's Anatomy" cast — but he was ultimately killed off in season 17. So what happened? After a short-lived and doomed relationship with his on-again, off-again girlfriend, fellow intern Dr. Sam Bello (Jeanine Mason), and a fling with Cristina Yang's replacement cardiothoracic chief, Dr. Maggie Pearce (Kelly McCreary), Andrew ends up dating none other than the titular Grey herself, Meredith (Ellen Pompeo). (Meredith and Maggie are half-sisters — they're both daughters of the pioneering female surgeon Dr. Ellis Grey, played throughout the series by Kate Burton — and frankly, nobody finds it weird that Andrew dates Maggie and Meredith. At least, I don't think anyone finds it weird enough.)
Andrew and Meredith's relationship doesn't last, partly because he's an intern while she's an award-winning attending surgeon, and Andrew ultimately realizes that she'll never harbor the same respect for him that she held for her late husband, Derek Shepherd. And after their split, Andrew struggles to come to terms with his bipolar diagnosis. Tragically, his life is cut short when he attempts to apprehend a human trafficker and is fatally stabbed. The frustrating part of this death as a viewer, though, is that Andrew gets stabbed on an episode of "Station 19," a firefighter-focused spinoff of "Grey's Anatomy," and the Seattle hospital's failed attempts to save his life happen on "Grey's Anatomy."
Sorry, Shondaland. A lot of us didn't watch "Station 19" — which got canceled in 2024 after seven seasons — but whatever. Andrew was a solid character, and his death was certainly disturbing and emotional, but losing him didn't fully change the DNA of "Grey's Anatomy," which definitely is the case for some of the deaths on the rest of this list.
Dr. George O'Malley
Poor George. Played by T.R. Knight, Dr. George O'Malley is one of the five original interns — alongside Meredith Grey, Cristina Yang, Alex Karev, and Isobel "Izzie" Stevens (Katherine Heigl) that we meet on "Grey's Anatomy," and right off the bat, he almost kills a patient during a routine appendectomy and earns the nickname "007." (This means he has a "license to kill," in case you didn't get it.) Despite this rocky start, George is a good doctor; during his intern year, he saves a young police officer's life in a stuck elevator while following verbal directions from then-cardiothoracic attending Dr. Preston Burke (Isaiah Washington), and he's a compassionate, friendly, and empathetic physician who goes above and beyond for his patients.
Still, most of George's storylines — apart from a truly emotional multi-episode arc where he grapples with the sudden death of his father — center on his love life and his failed relationships with his wife, Dr. Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez), and his best friend turned lover, Izzie. (He also has a fling with Meredith, and the less that's said about that, the better.)
By the time season 5 of "Grey's Anatomy" rolls around, George has — and I cannot stress this enough — absolutely nothing to do within the show's narrative. (I'm not exaggerating when I say he mostly just ... reacts to stuff that happens to other people.) It makes sense that Knight wanted to leave the show — and George — behind, so Shonda Rhimes and her crew gave him a gruesome death.
After George decides to enlist in the United States Army as a medic, he pulls a random woman out of the path of an oncoming bus and ends up getting hit by it himself, arriving at Seattle Grace so gravely wounded that none of his friends even recognize him. By the time he uses his finger to write "007" on Meredith's palm, it's too late for George, who dies from his massive injuries and appears to Izzie, who herself is near-death due to a cancer diagnosis, in a dream as a sort of goodbye. I get why the show killed George, and discovering the identity of "John Doe" is genuinely a stunning moment ... but it's also classic, stupid "Grey's Anatomy" melodrama.
Dr. Derek Shepherd
The story goes something like this. In an excerpt of the "Grey's Anatomy" oral history "How to Save a Life" by Lynette Rice that ran on The Hollywood Reporter in 2021, people involved with "Grey's Anatomy" said that Patrick Dempsey became increasingly difficult on set because he just ... didn't want to be there, especially on days where he needed to work late. Dempsey is also an avid racecar driver, which may have led producer and writer Jeannine Renshaw to say this of the actor: "He's like a kid. He's so high energy and would go, 'What's happening next?' He literally goes out of his skin, sitting and waiting. He wants to be out driving his race car or doing something fun. He's the kid in class who wants to go to recess."
Now, bear in mind that Shonda Rhimes is a vengeful god; after an alleged spat with Katherine Heigl, the actress ended up doing cat litter commercials for a little while after leaving "Grey's Anatomy." (She's okay now.) My point is that, without any confirmation to back this up, I do think Rhimes killed Dempsey's Dr. Derek Shepherd in a car accident for a very pointed reason.
A lot of the circumstances involving Derek's death in the season 11 episode appropriately titled "How to Save a Life" are false starts. Derek sees a car accident happen while he's driving, but he doesn't get hurt; in fact, he saves the lives of everyone involved. Then, while he's looking for his cell phone in his car, he gets hit by a truck ... but makes it to a small hospital nearby. There, the doctors elect to skip a head CT to deal with Derek's more physically obvious chest injuries and miss the fact that he has a brain bleed that could have been treated but quickly turns fatal; when she arrives at the hospital, Meredith elects to take him off of life support.
Because he's Meredith's husband and the father of her children, Derek's death looms large over "Grey's Anatomy" for quite some time ... and also, it's all sort of silly in that he lightly cheats death about six times before the show finally kills him. Also, if my theory about Rhimes is right, the whole thing is really petty.
Dr. Lexie Grey
Speaking as a longtime "Grey's Anatomy" fan — for better and for worse — I loved Dr. Lexie Grey. The first of Meredith's two surprise half-sisters (Maggie shows up long after Lexie's tragic death, so her presence is considerably more ridiculous and far-fetched), Lexie is the young and brilliant daughter of Meredith's estranged father Thatcher (Jeff Perry) and his second wife Susan (the great Mare Winningham) who comes to work at Seattle Grace Hospital at the very end of season 3. Despite Meredith's reticence to get to know Lexie, who serves as a reminder that her father left her family only to go on and make a life with Susan and Lexie, the two ultimately form one of the show's sweetest bonds and become very close, and Lexie is just a really great character!
She has a photographic memory — which comes up during the narrative quite a lot because it's so helpful during her day-to-day life as a physician — and is funny, smart, and genuinely good at her job. Plus, Lexie's on-again, off-again romantic relationship with the hospital's plastic surgery attending Dr. Mark Sloan (Eric Dane) might just be the best romance on the entire series (sorry, Meredith and Derek).
That's what makes Lexie's sudden and violent death particularly heartbreaking. At the end of season 8, a handful of doctors — Meredith, Derek, Cristina, Mark, Lexie, and Arizona Robbins (Jessica Capshaw) — board a small plane to fly to Boise, Idaho, and help perform a surgery at a hospital there, but the plane crashes in the remote woods. At first, everybody seems injured but basically okay until it's revealed that Lexie is trapped under a part of heavy fuselage and can no longer feel her legs; we don't see the full extent of her injuries, but it's heavily suggested that her body is basically severed in half (or close to it) by the time she's found.
Mark holds her hand and tells her that they'll be together, providing comfort as Lexie succumbs to her irreversible injuries. Losing Lexie is a brutal blow on "Grey's Anatomy," and also, killing her off is stupid, because she's a really great character who makes the show better with her mere presence! (Lexie and Chyler Leigh do eventually return on "Grey's Anatomy," and I'll circle back to that shortly.)
Dr. Mark Sloan
In 2024, Eric Dane, the man behind Dr. Mark "McSteamy" Sloan, appeared on Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard (via People Magazine) and said his exit from "Grey's Anatomy" at the beginning of season 9 came down to two factors: Money and Dane's own personal issues. "I was starting to become — as most of these actors who have spent significant time on the show — you start to become very expensive for the network," Dane said before noting that as long as Ellen Pompeo stuck around, the network didn't have other strong priorities. "And the network knows that the show is going to do what it's going to do, irrespective of who they keep on it—as long as they have their Grey they were fine," he continued. Dane was also candid about his own personal state at the time: "I wasn't the same guy they had hired, so I had understood when I was let go and [show creator] Shonda [Rhimes] was really great."
After showing up in season 2 as Derek's best friend turned enemy — which happens because Mark sleeps with Derek's wife, Addison Montgomery (Kate Walsh), while Derek and Addison are still married — Mark, a cocksure and wildly talented plastics expert, becomes a vital part of "Grey's Anatomy." Not only does he rekindle his friendship with Derek and end up involved with Lexie, but his "friends with benefits" relationship with Callie also has an unexpected result after the two end up having a baby together, whom he co-parents with Callie and her wife, Arizona.
Mark makes it back from the plane crash apparently intact despite experiencing several severe internal injuries, but weeks after the fact, he just ... dies. It is, frankly, so stupid. I understand that the show needed to write Dane off for the reasons I already discussed, but Mark's death isn't just insanely anticlimactic; it marks the end of a genuinely great era of "Grey's Anatomy," because Mark is such an indispensable character on the series.
Dr. Meredith Grey (Technically)
Meredith almost dies on "Grey's Anatomy" almost constantly. Besides being in a plane crash, asking a shooter to shoot her instead of Derek, and putting her hand on a bomb in a body cavity, the second-closest Meredith comes to death is in season 17, where she ends up in a coma as a result of a severe case of COVID-19. While in said coma, she hallucinates a beach and reunites with almost everybody on this list — Andrew DeLuca, George O'Malley, Lexie Grey, Mark Sloan, and Derek Shepherd all show up at various points, with their respective actors reprising their roles — but that's not what I'm here to talk about. I'm here to talk about the time when, in season 3 of "Grey's Anatomy," Meredith is legally dead and miraculously comes back to life without any lasting effects from, you know, being dead.
In the season's 15th episode, "Walk on Water," the doctors at Seattle Grace are called to help at the site of a massive ferryboat crash, and while she's tending to a little girl, Meredith falls into the water and, by all accounts, drowns. Though Derek rescues her, she's blue when he finds her, and when Meredith makes it back to the hospital as a patient instead of a doctor, she is, by all appearances, dead. (I cannot stress this enough!) The doctors, all of whom are Meredith's friends and loved ones, keep trying different treatments, none of which seem to work, and both Miranda Bailey and Richard Webber try to raise her body temperature, insisting that she's not truly dead until she's "warm and dead." Meanwhile, in a precursor to the coma beach, Meredith is in a sort of limbo with a bunch of dead people from the show — including Jeffrey Dean Morgan's standout character Denny Duquette — which also drives home the point that she is dead. Despite all of this, Meredith returns to the world of the living with no apparent mental deficits or lifelong problems, even though we can safely assume her brain was deprived of oxygen for, like, a very long time. Meredith's "death" is the stupidest death of a doctor on "Grey's Anatomy" without question.
"Grey's Anatomy," which is both stupid and extremely wonderful, is streaming on both Hulu and Netflix now.
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Read the original article on SlashFilm.
