Grey’s Anatomy Season 18 is coming to ABC this fall.
For fans that just watched the disjointed Season 17 finale, the great news is that ABC has renewed the medical drama for at least another year.
As for what was going on with that last episode of Grey’s Anatomy, there is a good explanation for why the stories and plot lines felt like they were all over the place.
Actress Camilla Luddington, who plays Jo Wilson on the Grey’s Anatomy cast, provided a lot of insight into what was going on during the filming of the Grey’s Anatomy season finale.
As she tells it, when the cast received the script for the Season 17 finale, nobody even knew if Grey’s Anatomy would be canceled or renewed by ABC. That echoed what one of the showrunners has also said, with the episode set up to possibly even be a series finale.
The season finale definitely felt rushed in places, and that was done to make sure that there weren’t any huge cliffhangers that didn’t get answered in case it became a series finale.
Grey’s Anatomy Season 18 coming soon
Luckily, the great news is that ABC ordered more episodes of Grey’s Anatomy and fans are going to see the show return in the fall of 2021.
ABC has released its weekly schedule for the fall 2021 television season and Thursday nights will remain the same for Station 19 (airing at 8/7c) and Grey’s Anatomy (airing at 9/8c) each week.
Ellen Pompeo returns as Meredith Grey
There had been some concerns that actress Ellen Pompeo may have decided to bring her time as Meredith Grey to an end. Her latest contract was coming to an end in Season 17, and it was unclear if she wanted to keep dedicating her life to this role.
As we also previously reported, actress Chandra Wilson (Dr. Miranda Bailey) and actor James Pickens Jr. (Dr. Richard Webber) were also in negotiations for new deals. The trio of original Grey’s Anatomy cast members continues to be extremely important to the show, even after all of these years. Losing any of them would be tough for the show.
It looks like the three leads are back, as well as many of the other supporting characters. It wouldn’t be Grey’s Anatomy if there weren’t big casting changes, though, so we expect some announcements in that regard to come out during the upcoming summer months.
There were already some important Grey’s Anatomy cast members who left during Season 17, so at least we are a little prepared for some more bad news. It was definitely surprising that Jesse Williams left the show, but at least his character, Jackson Avery, can be happy with April Kepner in Boston.
ABC has not yet announced when the Season 18 premiere will take place, but it should be around the end of September or the beginning of October in 2021. Since a lot of filming restrictions have been lifted, maybe we can see a big crossover event with Station 19 to kick off the new campaign.
Grey’s Anatomy returns with Season 18 in the fall of 2021 at ABC.