In its fall finale last week, Grey’s Anatomy prepared to send off Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) and set fire to her beloved house during a lightning storm. Any Grey’s fan knows that Meredith’s house has been one of the few constants on a show full of jarring and often heart-wrenching developments. From being the site of Meredith and Derek’s (Patrick Dempsey) first one-night stand to being home to half of the hospital staff throughout the course of the show, it's been a reliable focal point and has served as a security blanket for Meredith all through the series. But could burning it down actually be a good thing?

Who Has Lived in Meredith's House?

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Known for “taking in strays” as Derek not-so-affectionately dubbed it, Meredith has housed most of her friends, family, and even acquaintances in her home at some point in the series. To offer a brief refresher, in Season 1, we learned that this house formerly belonged to Meredith’s mother, Ellis Grey (Kate Burton), and that Meredith lived there with her parents when she was young. After Ellis’s split from Meredith’s father, she took Meredith to Boston, and the house was left empty. Years later, Ellis is put in long-term care for her Alzheimer’s and Meredith returns to Seattle. She begins her internship at Seattle Grace, decides to keep the house and get some roommates, and so Izzie (Katherine Heigl) and George (T.R. Knight) move in.

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Fast-forward through the show, and more of our favorite characters like Derek, Alex (Justin Chambers), Lexie (Chyler Leigh), Cristina (Sandra Oh), Callie (Sara Ramirez), Arizona (Jessica Capshaw) and Jo (Camilla Luddington) all lived there. It’s also where April (Sarah Drew) and Jackson (Jesse Williams) came to stay after their friends were killed in the hospital shooting, and where Meredith returned with her children and her sisters Amelia (Caterina Scorsone) and Maggie (Kelly McCreary) following Derek's death. Throughout the show, the house was always what the doctors in this turbulent medical drama desperately needed: a safe space.

The House was Meredith's Sanctuary

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While Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital is also widely considered a home for the surgeons throughout the show, it also holds many of their traumas. It was the site of George’s death, the shooting, Mark “McSteamy” Sloan's (Eric Dane) removal from life support, Meredith's violent assault by a patient, and unfortunately, much more. Meredith’s house, by comparison, was a refuge filled with Thanksgiving dinners, house parties, and study sessions, where Christmas trees scratched the ceiling and Meredith's children took their first steps.

Even when Meredith and Derek move into the Dream House at the beginning of Season 9 and Meredith sells her house to Alex, she still sees it as a home away from home. When her new neighborhood doesn’t have anywhere good to take her kids trick-or-treating, she asks Alex if she can use what is now his house to host a Halloween party. When Derek wanted to move their family to D.C. to prioritize his work on the brain mapping initiative, Meredith fled back to her old house to vent to Alex (see “I’m the sun, and he can go suck it.”) Even when she wasn’t living in it, Meredith knew that as long as her old house was still there and Alex was still living in it, she never had to let go of the place that had come to mean so much to her.

Why They Had to Set Fire to Meredith's House

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Image via ABC

Now that we know that Meredith is officially bidding us farewell in the series' winter return, we, like her, are faced with the end of an era. Following the decision of her move to Boston for her Alzheimer's research and Zola’s (Aniela Gumbs) schooling, the question has been up in the air about what will happen to her house. While we don’t actually know the extent of the damage to her home it's not looking good, and for a few reasons, this is actually a positive thing.

By setting fire to Meredith's house, the writers have made it so that even if Meredith wanted to change her mind and stay where she is, she can't. More than that, her loved ones can't live there and keep it as the safety net that Meredith's had to fall back on all these years. As hard as it is to watch her face yet another loss, this was a necessary change signifying that not only does Meredith have the opportunity to move on, she needs to take it. If this truly is the end of Meredith's cherished house, and we have to watch her say goodbye, we can only hope that her home gets the send-off it deserves in true Grey’s fashion — with shots of tequila and a Snow Patrol song.