Grey’s Anatomy has been on the air since 2005 – and has seen a lot of shakeups in the cast lineup. However, Season 17 brought on some major feels for the show’s longtime fans with the shocking return of one of the show’s OG stars.
In a resurgence no one saw coming, Patrick Dempsey’s character, Dr. Derek Shepard, a.k.a. McDreamy, who was married to Ellen Pompeo’s character, Dr. Meredith Grey, has made a very unexpected return to the show. “Was married,” as in past tense, because Dr. Shepard died in an episode back in 2015.
On Wednesday (November 18), Patrick went on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and opened up about how his headline-making return on the Grey’s came about.
Apparently, it started out as a brainstorm sesh with Ellen P. – they were trying to come up with a way to encourage people to wear masks. Catching up with his co-star led to a discussion about the possibility of him returning to the show.
“We hadn’t spoken in quite some time, so we were playing catchup and she goes, ‘What do you think about coming back on to the show? Here’s our idea of what we want to do for season 17,'” Patrick recalls. “I was like, ‘What a great opportunity for people. How great it would be for the fans, really, to see everybody reunited in this sort of bizarre way.'”
And when they ironed out the details and inked the necessary documents, they made sure everything was kept under wraps.
“Nobody knew about it other than… some people at ABC, Krista, and then Ellen and myself and that was it. And then we started talking to the directors, which would be Debbie Allen, who’s amazing, and Kevin McKidd, who’s one of the directors that I worked with,” he said. “That was it.”
“No one knew until I showed up on set that day,” Patrick continues. “We were really concerned that somebody would take a picture and it would get out somehow, but we managed to keep it a secret, which was pretty phenomenal.”
The season’s two-hour long season premiere showed Meredith and the rest of the staff of Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital tirelessly battling against the coronavirus pandemic. Meredith, exhausted from her fighting against the virus, was found collapsed on the ground – and that’s when the late doctor visited her.
It’s unclear whether it was a dream or a glimpse of the afterlife or what. The two shared a scene on a beach, where Ellen’s Meredith tells her onscreen hubby, “Derek, I miss you.” And Patrick’s character replies, “I know.”
Fans couldn’t stop talking about their reunion. And Patrick also opened up about the overwhelming response they’ve gotten.
“The impact, the response, has been incredibly overwhelming and very moving,” he says. “It was nice to be able to have it work out this way.”
“There’s so many souls that we have lost right now,” he adds. “The thought of having angels around us is very comforting, certainly to me.”
Can’t get enough of McDreamy? According to Patrick he’ll still be popping up “throughout the season” when Derek “comes back to visit” Meredith.
