Grey’s Anatomy is making its mark with a record-breaking episode Thursday night, promising viewers it will one to remember for years to come.
In an interview with PopCulture.com earlier this week, newcomer, Jake Borelli known for playing intern Levi Schmitt, admits he is just as excited for the milestone episode in the ABC series, which is set to displace ER from the longest running medical drama.
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“We’ve been talking about it since last year, honestly, so I think it’s just been a lot of anticipation and the producers I can tell are getting super excited about it too,” Borelli told PopCulture.com in a phone interview Feb. 25.
The long-running ABC medical drama does not hesitate to put beloved characters in danger when disaster strikes the hospital, whether it’d be a natural tragedy, an accident or a man-made catastrophe.
Thursday’s episode titled, “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” will take place outside of the hospital as Jackson (Jesse Williams) throws a party to the doctors who saved her mother Catherine’s (Debbie Allen) life. The episode will also see Alex’s (Justin Chambers) mother Helen (Lindsay Wagner) arrive for a surprise visit.
Ahead of the latest Grey’s Anatomy tragedy, take a look at some of the show’s most devastating tragedies.
Train Crash
The second season of Grey’s allowed viewers to dive deeper into the relationships between characters, as well as on their medical training. On “Into You Like a Train,” the hospital was bombarded with patients from a deadly train crash, bringing with them a touch case involving a young woman and an older man impaled together by a metal rod.
The case resulted in the women having to be essentially sacrificed to save the man, as he had better odds at surviving, which left Meredith very affected at the time. No Seattle Grace doctors were hurt during the dramatic episode, though viewers did go through quite a few Kleenex boxes.
Sinkhole
Season 8’s two-hour premiere gave the show’s fictional Seattle setting a devastating catastrophe in the form of a massive sinkhole in the middle of the downtown area.
Callie and Owen both saw themselves in the middle of relief efforts during the episode, though none of the main characters were in any specific danger. The sinkhole was not mentioned in subsequent episodes of season 8, but given its size, we’d bet it’s probably still there.
Necessary Fire
The last two episodes of season 13 marked the goodbye of Dr. Stephanie Edwards (Jerrika Hinton) in a blaze of glory.
The tragic episode saw the doctor start a fire at the hospital to prevent a rapist from kidnapping a young child, and her later having to escape the fire, and facing some serious burns in the process, to get each other to safety. After her heroic moment, Stephanie decides to leave the hospital as she doesn’t want to spend her entire life surrounded by medicine.
We miss you Stephanie!
Earthquake
On the scale of the show’s natural disasters, the earthquake episode in season 11 is not particularly terrible. Other than the threat of Meredith losing her success surgical streak, and Maggie finding herself stuck in an elevator momentarily, there wasn’t much of a threat for our doctors.
Honorable mention to young Millie Bobby Brown for keeping us on our toes playing a young girl on the phone with Owen trying to save her mother while trapped at their home.
The Super Storm
Before Thursday’s windstorm, there was season nine’s thunderstorm.
After the season 8 finale (which we will get to later), nothing could feel quite as devastating. The last two episodes of the following season saw a bus crash, Meredith having an emergency C-section in the dark, and Richard possibly dying of electrocution in a cliffhanger ending that left many breathless.
Ferry Crash
Still one of Grey’s Anatomy‘s most iconic moment, the ferry crash kicked off so much story for the series, including Meredith Grey’s infamous near-death experience.
After a patient accidentally pushed her into the cold water at the crash site, viewers watch as Meredith struggles to keep going until her trauma leads her to consider letting go. The moment is what sets the chain of events which eventually lead to Meredith’s road to recovery.
Bomb
Grey’s Anatomy shocked the massive post-Super Bowl time slot audience in its second season with the intense aftermath of a patient ending up with live ammunition on his chest and a paramedic having her hand in his body cavity, preventing the explosion.
The show upped the ante of an already tense episode when the paramedic removed her hand in a moment of panic and Meredith stepped in, leading to an emotional hour with bomb squad leader Dylan’s (Kyle Chandler) introduction, only to later blow up in the episode’s final moments.
Thirteen seasons later and the bomb episode continues to be one of the show’s best arcs.
Shooter on the Loose
Do you still see resident Reed’s lifeless face after she was shot to death in your nightmares? We sure do, yet she was only one of many members of the hospital staff who were either shot to death or injured during the two-hour season 6 finale.
Alex and Derek were shot in the terrifying episodes, Meredith had a miscarriage, and even the moment where Bailey was almost shot gives us chills.
Car Crash(es)
The cast of Grey’s Anatomy has been in so many devastating crashes, and survived, that we thought we would be okay in season 11 after Derek stopped in the middle of the street to help the survivors of a gruesome accident.
After Derek is done rescuing some teens, a mother and her child, the series throws another curveball when Derek is in his own car accident as a truck runs him over and he dies at a nearby hospital later in the episode.
The devastation on Meredith’s face when she finds out that her husband is dead will never stop making us cry.
Plane Crash
The season 8 finale wins the award for most devastating tragedy when the series decided to put some of our favorite cast members on a plane, only for it to crash in the Idaho wilderness.
Of the group — Meredith, Cristina, Derek, Lexie, Arizona and Mark — two of them died from the crash, Arizona lost her leg and all involved were left with serious traumatic scars. The series was at its evil peak in the finale’s last scene, when Meredith, Cristina and Derek were left under blankets and having used their last match for warmth, hoping to be found before dying of exhaustion. You can bet that was a long summer for Grey’s Anatomy fans.
Are you ready for the wind storm? Grey’s Anatomy‘s fall finale airs Thursday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
