This past Thursday, the very popular ABC hit, Grey’s Anatomy aired its 300th episode. The milestone episode remembered many past characters on the show including Derek Shepard, Mark Sloan, Callie Torrez, Christina Yang, George O’Mally, Izzy Stevens, Lexi Grey and even Meredith’s mom, Ellis Grey, who made an emotional appearance.
Fans of the show will understand the importance of remembering these iconic characters. The episode started out remembering everyone’s favorite McDreamy, Derek Shepard. As Alex Karev and Meredith Grey take a ride on the Seattle Ferry, Derek’s favorite, to tell him that Meredith is up for a Harper Avery Award. With ferries being Derek’s favorite thing in Seattle, Meredith feels connected to him when she rides it so it was only appropriate to tell him this important news there. Joking to Alex that Derek was “jealous” of her nomination, it was certainly a scene that made fans smile.
The Harper Avery Award is a very, very important award for surgeons. Meredith’s mother had won it twice just in her residency. As Meredith gets ready to leave to go to the award show, a major trauma is about to come in and she wants to see what happened. It turns out there was an accident at an amusement park, and a young man and woman are stuck in the roller coaster seats. As Meredith and Alex watch, the two in the seats remind them of their friends George and Christina.
These two also had a pregnant friend with them who obviously couldn’t go on the roller coaster, and this woman reminded them of Izzy Stevens. Remembering Izzy in an emotional speech from Alex explaining to Jo where he pictures Izzy’s life now.
Eventually Meredith gets too involved in the trauma that she doesn’t end up going to the award show. Instead she performs surgery on the young woman that reminded her of her best friend Christina Yang who stated “act like I’m your friend” right before she goes in for surgery.
Taking light off the trauma and Meredith Grey for a while, Arizona Robbin’s Daughter comes to visit. Seeing little Sofia, it immediately reminded everyone of their favorite Trio, Mark, Callie and Arizona. Arizona and Mark used to butt heads over Callie and Sofia but Arizona had a very touching speech about missing mark and all the fun they had together. Sofia ends ups saying that she misses her momma, referring to Callie, Arizona agrees and as they leave the room the camera zooms in to a picture of all four of them from a past episode.
This episode also introduced the idea of a new spin off series. Miranda Bailey’s husband Ben has started to train to become a firefighter, which is sparking light of a new show, still taking place in Seattle but focusing on the fire house rather than the hospital. This honestly gets me excited, as I always love cross over episodes and if Miranda and Ben stay married we’ll be seeing a lot of them!
Back to Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, all the surgeons gather in the sky box of the operating room where Meredith is operating, when they stream the Harper Avery Award winner live so she can see it. Of course, she wins the award, and Jackson accepts the award for her and gives an amazing speech remembering all the people that would be / are so proud of Meredith in that moment, including her sister and in the end, her mother who we see sitting up in the sky box looking down and clapping at Meredith as she looks back at her.
Not a dry eye for the diehard Grey’s Anatomy fans as they watched this episode, especially at the very end when Meredith and Alex go back to their old hang out spot, pop a bottle of champagne and talk to Christina on the phone.
It was truly the perfect 300th episode fans could’ve hoped for. Grey’s Anatomy has stood the test of time.