- ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" returns on Thursday with its 17th season.
- The 16th season left fans with a lot of questions and heartbreaking moments.
- Warning: Spoilers for season 16 of "Grey's Anatomy" ahead
- Meredith Grey ended the season in the middle of a love triangle, and characters like Jo Karev, Jackson Avery, and Levi Schmitt were single by the final episode.
- Richard Webber underwent a lifesaving surgery and Amelia Shepherd gave birth to a baby boy.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
On Thursday, ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" will return for its 17th season.
Previously, season 16's finale left fans with a lot of questions and surprise twists. The season was originally supposed to have 25 episodes, but amid the coronavirus pandemic, production shut down in March, meaning the show came to an end four episodes early.
Read on to see what all of the main "Grey's Anatomy" characters are up to by the end of season 16.
Warning: Spoilers for season 16 of "Grey's Anatomy" ahead.
Meredith Grey has a new love interest and a new love triangle.
Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) had quite the intense season.
The season began with her completing community-service hours after she was caught committing insurance fraud — she'd lied on a form to help a young girl who had cancer but no means to pay for the treatment.
But she kept leaving in the middle of her shifts to go check on her former patients, which led to her spending a couple of days in jail for not meeting her community-service requirements.
She also faced potentially losing her medical license but was saved at the last minute when several of her colleagues and former patients vouched for her.
On the romantic side of things, she and Andrew DeLuca (Giacomo Gianniotti) broke up, and Meredith began a flirtationship with the new pediatric surgeon and widower Cormac Hayes (Richard Flood). He had been sent to the hospital by Meredith's best friend, Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh), clearly in a bid to try to set the two of them up.
By the finale, Meredith agreed to grab drinks with Cormac at a later date — but on her way out of the hospital, she stumbled across a visibly upset Andrew and stopped to help him and bring him home.
Richard Webber nearly died of a mysterious illness, but got a lifesaving surgery during the finale.
After being fired during season 15 for not reporting Meredith's insurance fraud, Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.) went to work at a new hospital called Pac-North with Alex Karev (Justin Chambers), who had also been fired.
But after an argument with his wife, Catherine Fox (Debbie Allen), led to her buying Pac-North and shutting it down, Richard returned to Grey-Sloan.
He then began exhibiting signs of illness, including shaky hands, so he stepped back from surgery. Eventually, his mystery illness progressed to numbness in his legs and mental disorientation.
None of the doctors could figure out what was wrong with him but, during the finale, Richard finally got a diagnosis, courtesy of Andrew DeLuca.
Richard was suffering cobalt toxicity from a prior hip replacement. He underwent surgery to repair the hip and woke up alert and with his memory back.
Unfortunately for Catherine, that meant he also remembered that he was mad at her, and he threw her out of his recovery room.
After a series of petty moves, Catherine Fox was spurned by her husband.
After buying and dissolving Pac-North led to a huge rift in her marriage with Richard, the two decided to separate. At one point, she asked for him to take her back, but he refused.
When Catherine learned that Richard was sick, she immediately came and sat by his bedside. Once he was out of surgery and feeling better, he remained angry with her — even though she was ready to put the past behind them.
Miranda Bailey became a foster parent and helped Amelia get through intense labor.
Early during season 16, Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson) experienced a miscarriage.
As she began to move forward with her life again, she found herself taken by a teenage foster kid who was being treated at the hospital. The teenager had younger siblings who he was scared of losing, and Miranda promised him she'd do everything she could to make sure he could stay in touch with them.
Without asking her husband first, Miranda decided to let the young teen move in with their family. This was briefly a point of contention for her and her husband, but they worked through it.
During the finale, she also helped Amelia Shepherd (Caterina Scorsone) give birth — just as George O'Malley (T.R. Knight) once did for Miranda during season two.
Alex Karev left Seattle to be a father and to be with Izzie Stevens.
Actor Justin Chambers left the show midway through season 16, so his character, Alex Karev, had to be given an off-screen exit.
Using a mix of voiceover and letters, the showrunners had Alex leave Seattle to be with his ex-wife Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl). She now had 5-year-old twins, who turned out to have been fathered by Alex.
He said goodbye to his Grey-Sloan colleagues and current wife Jo Karev (Camilla Luddington) via the personal letters, explaining his decision to stay with Izzie and be a present father for his kids.
Jo Karev ended the season single, and focused on her career.
During the beginning of the season, Jo was working on her mental health in an outpatient facility.
Once she returned to Grey-Sloan, this time finally as an attending physician, things seemed to be looking up for her and Alex's relationship — the couple even renewed their vows.
But Alex left a few episodes later, leaving Jo heartbroken and without much closure since he left her with a letter.
During the finale, she scoffed at the idea of finding love again, but she seemingly implied she'd be open to eventually joining a dating app.
Owen Hunt called off his wedding after learning that his fiancée was cheating on him.
At the start of the season, Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd) was adjusting to life as a parent of two and he also took a job over at the Pac-North hospital with Alex Karev and Richard Webber.
When that hospital was dissolved, he came back to Grey-Sloan. Later in the season, he proposed to Teddy Altman (Kim Raver), the mother of his second child.
During the finale, the pair was planning on getting married quickly and quietly in their home. But Owen learned Teddy was cheating on him when she accidentally recorded and sent a voicemail to him while she was having sex with her ex-boyfriend Tom Koracick (Greg Germann).
At the end of the episode, Owen broke down and cried and pretended that he had to go into surgery to avoid the wedding.
Teddy Altman had an affair with her ex, and was left at the altar.
This season, fans learned a pretty significant part of Teddy's backstory.
It turns out that 20 years ago, when she was living in New York, Teddy had an affair with her best friend's girlfriend, Allison, who has since died. It's this same Allison who Teddy named her daughter after, signifying the major impact that relationship had on her.
That story helped give some context to her present-day situation, in which she is having an affair with her ex-boyfriend, Tom Koracick, while she's engaged to Owen.
During the finale, she attempted to end things with Tom (though she has sex with him "one last time" for good measure) before marrying Owen.
As mentioned, Owen called off the wedding by pretending he was going into surgery. Teddy doesn't know yet that Owen is aware of her cheating.
Tom Koracick wanted to run away with Teddy.
Early on in the season, Catherine Fox gave Tom a big promotion at the hospital, putting him in charge of all operations and essentially making him the chief of chiefs.
During the season, Tom also accepted a bribe to give a wealthy tech billionaire a false neurological diagnosis so he could escape the blame of a recent failed rocket launch. In return for the false brain-aneurysm diagnosis, the billionaire agreed to donate a ton of money to Grey-Sloan.
Tom also spent much of the season pining over his ex, Teddy, who was engaged to Owen. When he and Teddy began having an affair, he encouraged her to run away with him.
She said she was going to marry Owen instead and slept with Tom "one last time" during the finale.
Jackson Avery went through two breakups.
At the beginning of the season, Maggie Pierce (Kelly McCreary) and Jackson Avery (Jesse Williams) broke up.
He then briefly started a relationship with Vic Hughes (Barrett Doss), a firefighter at Station 19. They broke up after she wanted to move in with him and he wasn't ready to take that next step.
By the end of the season, Jackson is still processing his recent breakup while emotionally supporting his mother, Catherine, through her split with Richard.
Maggie Pierce met a new love interest.
After her breakup with Jackson, Maggie suffered another big loss when her mistake in the operating room led to the death of her cousin. She tried to quit medicine altogether but eventually came back to the hospital to resume her work.
And as Jackson's love life stalled toward the end of the season, Maggie's picked up.
She reunited with an old work colleague named Winston (Anthony Hill) at a conference and the two of them had such amazing chemistry that he suggested one of them move to the other's city so they could begin a relationship.
Maggie said she needed some time to think his offer through.
Amelia Shepherd had her baby.
At the start of season 16, Amelia discovered that she was pregnant, which sped up her budding relationship with Atticus "Link" Lincoln (Chris Carmack).
Things got even more complicated when she briefly thought the baby could have been Owen's, but a paternity test confirmed that it was Link's.
By the end of the season, she delivered a healthy baby boy. The child's name is set to be revealed next season, according to showrunner Krista Vernoff.
Atticus "Link" Lincoln became a father.
At first, Link was thrilled to hear that he was going to be a dad. But when the question of the child's paternity came up, he struggled to know if he could parent a child that wasn't his.
Amelia broke up with him over it, but he eventually won her back by stating that he didn't care whose baby it was and that he loved Amelia and he would love the baby, too.
After all that, a paternity test showed the baby was his.
During the finale, he missed the birth of his child to perform Richard's emergency surgery, but was thrilled to learn that his son had been born.
Cormac Hayes replaced Alex Karev at the hospital and quickly became besotted with Meredith.
The show's newest doctor was brought in to replace Alex as head of pediatrics after he had been recommended to the hospital by Cristina Yang.
Meredith and Cormac bonded over both losing their spouses at a young age and shared the struggles of raising children as a single parent.
During the finale, Cormac invited Meredith to grab drinks after work. She accepted the offer, but asked for a rain check because she was exhausted from a long day of surgery.
Andrew DeLuca started off the season strong, but began to unravel and show irrational behavior.
At the start of the season, Andrew was dating Meredith and he was appointed to chief resident, but things began to devolve around midseason.
First, he broke up with Meredith after learning that she wouldn't have dated him anymore if she had lost her medical license because she'd have been too jealous that he got to perform surgery.
They both continued to have feelings for each other for the rest of the season, but their chances of reconciling were complicated by Andrew's increasingly concerning behavior.
On multiple occasions, he made irrational (and sometimes illegal) decisions and lashed out at patients, at other doctors, and in the operating room. Meredith also began to suspect that he might be showing signs of mania, similar to what his father had experienced.
After violently accusing a patient's guardian of human trafficking (which viewers later saw may have actually been the case), Andrew was suspended.
During the final episode, he returned to work and discovered that Richard's symptoms were being caused by a now-toxic hip replacement.
Andrew was allowed to scrub in on the surgery but was not allowed to perform any of it himself.
All season, Andrew seemed pretty resistant to any suggestion that he may be experiencing the same mental-health issues as his father — but during the last moments of the finale, he broke down sobbing, telling Meredith, "I don't know what's going on."
Levi Schmitt split from his boyfriend and moved in with Jo.
During Meredith's medical-license trial, it was discovered that Levi Schmitt (Jake Borelli) was the one who accidentally turned her in for insurance fraud.
He admitted that he reported what he thought was just a paperwork error and that he didn't learn until later that it was actually Meredith intentionally lying on the form. He was ostracized by his colleagues following the news until Meredith said that she had forgiven him.
In his personal life, he moved out of his mother's basement after realizing that she wasn't as accepting of his sexuality as he'd hoped. He briefly moved in with his boyfriend, Nico Kim (Alex Landi), but that led to some tension in their relationship.
Schmitt also began to think that he cared more about his relationship with Nico than his partner did. The two broke up when Nico decided to take a job offer without ever considering what it would mean for their relationship.
By the end of the season, Schmitt is single and living with Jo Karev, and the two are commiserating over their respective breakups.
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