Grey's Anatomy Season 17 Finale Finally Catches Up to 2021

Grey's Anatomy ended season 17 with a series of time jumps, and a few things changed along the way.

By Lauren Piester Jun 04, 2021 2:00 AMTags
Watch: "Grey's Anatomy": Newlywed Game

We can all breathe a sigh of relief: Grey's Anatomy made it to present day.

After months of living firmly in the middle of 2020, the Grey's finale did some graceful time jumping to get to April 2021. All the doctors are vaccinated, people are married, people are engaged, and life, for the most part, is good. 

While Maggie (Kelly McCreary) and Winston's (Anthony Hill) initial rushed wedding was halted by his grandma and her dad, it was only to make sure they had the wedding they deserved, with all their family members present. That, it turns out, was the April 2021 even that the whole finale was leading up to. That wedding ended up going perfectly, though Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) and Teddy (Kim Raver) had to duck out early when lungs became available for a long-suffering COVID patient, whose case the finale followed over the course of eight months. 

Teddy (Kim Raver) and Owen (Kevin McKidd), meanwhile, are engaged, and Jo (Camilla Luddington) has put together a beautiful little life for herself. She worked hard to win custody of baby Luna and sold her shares of the hospital to Tom (Greg Germann). She then bought Jackson's (Jesse Williams) condo, and moved herself and her new baby into it. She also might have an unfortunate new roommate. 

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2021 TV Premiere Dates

The biggest cliffhanger-y moment came from Link (Chris Carmack) and Amelia (Caterina Scorsone), though it wasn't exactly a surprise. Amelia doesn't want more kids and Link really does, and it took her a really long time (the full eight months that the episode spanned) to really come to terms with that, if she even really did come to terms with it. 

After months of preparing and almost doing it once or twice, Link proposed on the beach after Maggie and Winston's wedding. Amelia didn't answer him, and the next scene showed Link arriving at Jo's new place, hoping for a place to crash. 

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Sometimes, it feels like this show really has things backwards. Teddy and Owen have been through all kinds of garbage, with each of them consistently doing annoying things and making other people and themselves miserable, and we get to watch them happily and also bafflingly get engaged? Meanwhile, Amelia is stringing Link along for nearly a year as he plans a proposal and she pretends to want the same things he wants? Why does Amelia keep ending up with men who want different things than her? 

They were so nice together, so happy and pleasant to watch, and neither one of them named their baby after their dead lover, as far as we know! Why are you giving us the thing we don't want and not giving us the thing we do want, Grey's Anatomy?! 

Anyway, other than that, this was a lovely, happy finale that pulled the show out of the darkness and onto a beautiful sunny beach that had nothing to do with anyone dead. We may now have to wait a while for more, but at least there's no disaster hanging over our heads all summer. 

Elsewhere, on Station 19, Maya (Danielle Savre) and Carina (Stefania Spampinato) are successfully wife and wife but, Maya has now been fired after she defied orders to save a kid during a fire. Andy (Jaina Lee Ortiz) blames Robert (Boris Kodjoe) for Maya's firing, and they're not the only couple getting shaken up. 

Inara (Colleen Foy) broke up with Jack (Grey Damon) because she knows he doesn't actually love her, while Travis (Jay Hayden) confessed his love to Emmett (Lachlan Buchanan). Emmett resisted at first, but then they were happily making out in the bathroom. 

Travis also patched things up with Theo (Carlos Miranda) and gave Vic the green light to date him after all. So of course, just as Dean (Okieriete Onaodowan) got up the courage to tell her he's in love with her, he found that her face was already a little busy. 

Station 19 did not get to jump ahead eight months like Grey's did, but hopefully there will be time for that in the season five premiere, after a few things get addressed. We'll find out in a few months! 

Grey's Anatomy and Station 19 air on ABC.