Grey’s Anatomy has officially bid farewell to its namesake, Meredith Grey, who made her last appearance as a series regular in Episode 7, titled “I’ll Follow the Sun.” Ellen Pompeo’s beloved character has been a mainstay in the medical drama since it started airing in 2005, but her role was significantly cut in later seasons. She’s gone, not for good, but how did her exit play out?
In Season 19, she appears in eight episodes, and the Season 19 finale marks the last time we’ll be seeing her for a while, at least as anything other than a narrator. Season 20 has been confirmed, but due to the ongoing writers’ and SAG-AFTRA strikes, its Netflix release date may suffer a substantial delay.
So how does Meredith leave? Let’s give you what you came for.
How does Meredith Grey leave Grey’s Anatomy?
Long story short, Meredith decides to leave Seattle and move to Boston with her three kids: Zola, Derek, and Ellis. She ends up finding a promising STEM school for Zola to attend. As for Meredith herself, she bids Grey Sloan Memorial farewell to accept a new job opportunity working with former colleague Jackson Avery on finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease.
All of these changes began when Zola started having panic attacks at school. Meredith soon comes to the realization that Zola is having difficulty at school because she’s exceptionally gifted. In order to give her the best chance, she travels to Boston to find an appropriate school so that she can excel.
While in Boston, Meredith meets with Jackson (Jesse Williams) and expresses her desire to cure Alzheimer’s. Jackson encourages Meredith to come to Boston to work with him towards a cure. Although this seems like the dream opportunity for Meredith, she doesn’t accept right away. It’s not until Meredith finds out that Zola really shines at the STEM school in Boston that she accepts the offer officially.
Meredith performs her last surgery at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital and although she loses her patient, she discovers she was an author. The patient leaves behind a thumb drive containing her final draft, which Meredith vows to publish when she moves to Boston.
Much to Meredith’s surprise, a goodbye party is thrown in her honor, which everyone attends but Nick. It’s worth noting that her and Nick’s relationship wasn’t on the best terms after she said she loved him, but he didn’t say it back.
After that, Meredith heads to the airport, gets on a plane with her kids, and departs for Boston. Nick calls Meredith while she’s on the plane and finally tells her he loves her, but Meredith tells him that she can’t hear him over the plane jets and promises to call him back once they land. The fate of their relationship remains ambiguous.
Why did Ellen Pompeo leave Grey’s Anatomy?
After 19 seasons of the same show, it’s understandable that Pompeo might want to spread her wings a little bit, especially when the same thing for almost 20 years can get a little repetitive. When Ellen Pompeo appeared on The Drew Barrymore Show last year, she shared a desire to “mix things up a bit” and “do something new.”
“I feel super happy, but listen, the show has been incredible to me and I’ve loved a lot of the experience. Listen, it’s just, I gotta mix it up a little bit. I’m 53. My brain is like scrambled eggs. I gotta do something new or I’m literally gonna turn into like, you can’t do the New York Times crossword puzzle every single day. I mean, 19 years, that’s more than people keep their kids in their house, like people keep their kids in their house until they’re 18 and then they send them off to college. So this is like me like going away to college.
I have a lot that I’m doing. I have three kids and so I take care of them, and it’s really important for me to be around for them and be more present for them.”
Pompeo met her husband Chris Ivery in 2003, then married him in 2007. They share two daughters and a son together. She’s enjoying motherhood right now, but don’t worry, we’ll still hear her voice on Grey’s Anatomy, since she’ll continue narrating the show.
