GREY’S ANATOMY Recap: Meredith Grey Says Goodbye to Seattle

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the Thursday, February 23 episode of GREY’S ANATOMY, “I’ll Follow the Sun.”]

After almost 19 years (and over 400 episodes), Ellen Pompeo’s Meredith Grey has officially left GREY’S ANATOMY—and Seattle.

With a move to Boston on the horizon, Meredith came to Grey Sloan for a final day in “I’ll Follow the Sun.” She and her off-on boyfriend Nick (Scott Speedman) fought, with him expressing frustration she took a job across the country without telling him. She countered that she told him she loved him and he seemed to want to take things slow.

Unfortunately for the duo, they had more urgent issues to deal with—Tessa (Patricia Richardson) needed urgent surgery. Even worse: it didn’t go well, and she died during the procedure.

After, Nick tried to explain himself, reiterating his job meant he had to go slow. “That’s how humans respond,” he told Meredith. “They’re not machines, with an on-off switch.”

“And I’m a grown woman with a big life and a big career and three kids,” she replied. “And this move is what my daughter needs. I want you in my life if you want to be in my life. But if I have to choose, I’m going to pick me, I pick my kids, I pick what’s best for us. And I’m not going to beg you to love me.”

Initially, it seemed Nick was going to be content to let her go. But after he got a verbal kick-in-the-butt, he raced to the airport to intercept Meredith’s flight out of town…only to be thwarted by traffic.

As Meredith and her kids boarded the plane, Nick decided to make his grand gesture over the phone, instead. “I love you,” he told her when she picked up. “I fell in love with you the first day I met you. I fell in love with you the second day I met you. And I have loved you for every minute of every day I’ve known you.”

At her silence, Nick prompted, “Meredith?”

“Um, I—I can’t quite hear you,” she replied. “We’re about to take off, so I’ll call you when we get settled.”

But, as Meredith’s voiceover noted—courtesy of Tessa’s final, unpublished book, which Meredith read to her kids on the plane—this isn’t quite the end.

“So the end of my story is not any kind of ever-after,” Meredith read. “Because I’m still alive. I’m still here. And the sun still rises on my life.”

GREY’S ANATOMY, Thursdays, 9/8c, ABC

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