Since we first met her in 2005, Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) has become like a beloved, albeit sometimes frustrating friend. She’s bold, resilient, devoted, and reckless, and her complexities and imperfections are part of what makes her so compelling to watch. We’ve rooted for her as she’s grown beyond her mother’s impressive shadow, and gone from a brilliant but hesitant intern into a powerful surgical trailblazer. However, as any Grey’s Anatomy viewer knows, Meredith has not reached this point without enduring some massive hardships.
If anybody needs a refresher course on the Meredith trauma tally within the walls of Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, she has almost died from a drowning, witnessed her husband be shot, endured a miscarriage, and held her mangled friend’s hand after he got hit by a bus. This is where her mother, stepmother, and countless friends and coworkers died, and the cherry on top? The whole place is emblazoned with the name of her dead sister. Given what she’s been through, it was no surprise that after weighing her options this past season, she accepted an incredible job opportunity to move to Minnesota with her new boyfriend and head up the Grey Center as Director and Chief of General Surgery. And yet, Grey’s Anatomy seems hellbent on doing anything but letting Meredith Grey be happy.
To preface, there is obviously more to Meredith’s story arc than just what is up to the writers. There is no doubt that the show has to contend with contracts and network pressure as they decide what’s going to happen to major characters, and this isn’t to say that Meredith needs to be written off the show and permanently released from the Grey Sloan shackles. The issue in this past season has been that Meredith is being punished for wanting to grow and move on simply because her superiors think that she owes something to a place that, unfortunately, has harmed her as much as it’s helped her. On a show that’s largely known for its diverse group of career-driven women, it’s disheartening to see this total badass be forced into stagnancy because she’s being burdened by a legacy that she’s rejected since the beginning.
First off, there have been multiple characters on this show who have been allowed to leave Grey Sloan to pursue other ventures. At the end of Season 10, everyone’s favorite Cardio-God Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh), bade farewell to Seattle to run the prestigious Klausman Institute for Medical Research in Switzerland and do cutting-edge cardiothoracic work. Callie Torres (Sara Ramírez) followed her heart and her girlfriend to New York, and Addison Montgomery (Kate Walsh) went off to start a private practice —even getting a successful spin-off show out of it. Although they were all valued members of the surgical staff, these characters, along with many others, prioritized themselves and left Seattle, and they weren’t hindered by their friends and coworkers.
Now Meredith, who has quite literally put her blood, sweat, and tears into this hospital, is not only being guilt-tripped for wanting to leave, but she’s being completely manipulated into staying by the people who are supposed to support and encourage her. To add insult to injury, she’s finally found a post-McDreamy boyfriend (Scott Speedman) who won’t be reunited with a presumed-dead lover or stabbed to death by a child trafficker, and all of a sudden she’s being named Chief of Surgery so that she can’t be with him. This choice also isn’t fair to the former Chief Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson), as the show is using her burnout as an excuse to drag Meredith through the mud by using the Chief of Surgery position as a punishment rather than a promotion. The most recent episode had Bailey literally telling Meredith “you broke it, you bought it,” which pinned all the blame on Meredith, and made it seem like Bailey was fleeing her problems and trying to absolve herself of any guilt.
This isn’t the first time that Meredith has been framed as selfish for prioritizing her work, either. In Seasons 10 and 11, when her husband Derek (Patrick Dempsey) wanted to move to D.C. to work with the President on a brain-mapping initiative, he resented Meredith for wanting to stay in Seattle for her family and career. Now, years later, we have Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.) accusing Meredith of sabotaging the residency program and comparing her to her emotionally distant mother, who was known for being cold and cutthroat. As the once-revered Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital regresses into a shell of its former glory, Meredith is suddenly made the scapegoat for every shortcoming of the hospital because it seems like nobody else wants to deal with it.
Perhaps the most frustrating part of this entire situation is that Grey’s has proven that it can successfully alternate between Grey Sloan and the Grey Center. Throughout the past season, the show volleyed seamlessly between the goings-on in Seattle and Minnesota while Meredith worked on the Parkinson’s project. We even got great new characters in Dr. Hamilton (Peter Gallagher) and Dr. Bartley (E.R. Fightmaster), so it’s not clear as to why Meredith is being forced to stay in Seattle to clean up a mess that isn’t hers.
At the end of that day, Meredith deserves to be happy just as much as —if not more than— any other character on Grey’s Anatomy. She’s earned it. Although other characters have cited her fame, name, and reputation as reasons why she can’t leave Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, the Season 18 finale served as a greatest hits montage of some of Meredith’s most traumatic memories. Ultimately, what it showed us was that as much as it might hurt, it’s time for us to let her go. Like she said in this last episode, the end of an era is easier said than done. However, as we await the 19th season of Grey’s Anatomy, we can only hope that our remaining twisted sister finally gets the peace she deserves and isn’t left fighting for the right to live her own life.