Ellen Pompeo makes her exit from ‘Grey’s Anatomy’
How will “Grey’s Anatomy” be without Grey? One of the biggest departures in the show’s history begins as the long-running ABC medical drama returns to start completing its 19th season Thursday, Feb. 23, with title character Meredith Grey (played by Ellen Pompeo) marking her final day at Seattle’s Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital before relocating to Boston to work on an Alzheimer’s-related project and help adopted daughter Zola (Aniela Gumbs) pursue her education. The episode was written by executive producer Krista Vernoff, who also is leaving the show soon.
Though Pompeo may not be a physical presence as “Grey’s Anatomy” moves forward, she’ll still have a couple of off-camera roles in it: She’ll continue as an executive producer, and she’s expected to keep narrating the program as Meredith. However, there still are some issues to be resolved for the doctor before she goes, one of the foremost being the future of her relationship with Nick Marsh (Scott Speedman).
A factor in Pompeo’s departure from “Grey’s Anatomy” is her casting in a Hulu limited series on which she also will be an executive producer. It’ll be her first dramatic project outside “Grey’s” since the latter show began, though she has made crossover appearances on the “Grey’s” spinoff “Station 19,” on which she gets an executive-producer credit as well.
It certainly can be said that Meredith has had a very full life over nearly two decades on “Grey’s
Anatomy,” one of television’s longest-running primetime dramatic programs. In the premiere episode, she had a presumed one-night stand ... which turned out to be with Dr. Derek Shepherd, the new attending physician at the then-named Seattle Grace, the hospital where she was about to start an internship. The roles made Pompeo and Patrick Dempsey one of TV’S top couples, prompting a major event in Season 17 when the late Derek appeared in dream sequences to Meredith, who was stricken with COVID-19.
Meredith has been through much else, too, including the Alzheimer’s struggle and eventual loss of her renowned-surgeon mother Ellis (for whom she named her and Derek’s biological daughter). Her half-sister Lexie died in a plane crash in which Meredith also was involved, but she learned that she had another half-sister, hospital colleague Maggie Pierce.
Other romances have arisen for Meredith, but so have medical concerns that her being a doctor herself have made all the more poignant ... encompassing the surgical-chief job that she has maintained lately. It’s not impossible that Pompeo will resurface on “Grey’s Anatomy” in a guest capacity as time goes on, but as she leaves the show as a pivotal cast regular, it marks a new era for a series that has managed to remained a big part of the TV landscape (also streaming on Abc.com and Hulu) as the medium itself has undergone major changes.