Shonda Rhimes Reveals the 1 ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Plot Twist She Regrets
The ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ creator opened up about the ‘worst’ plot twist the show has ever done.
Key Points
- Shonda Rhimes calls Denny’s return as a hallucination Grey’s Anatomy’s “worst” plot twist.
- Her favorite twist is Scandal’s revelation that Rowan is Olivia Pope’s father.
- Rhimes now has “no idea” how Grey’s Anatomy will end after 22 seasons.
Throughout the years, Grey’s Anatomy has delivered countless jaw-dropping plot twists — but Shonda Rhimes says a certain twist takes the cake as the “worst” the show has ever done.
Before her appearance on The Kelly Clarkson Show on Tuesday, Oct. 14, the Grey’s Anatomy creator played a game of “First/Worst/Best” where the topic was “plot twists.”
“The worst plot twist was, and I’m just admitting this to only you, was when we brought Denny back from the dead,” Rhimes confessed. “I love that character in Grey’s but we should not have brought him back from the dead. I just like looking at him.”
The plot twist Rhimes is referring to occurred during season 5, when deceased former patient Denny Duqette (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) appeared to his ex-fiancée Dr. Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl) as a hallucination. Unbeknownst to Stevens at the time, she had cancer that had spread to her brain.
The plot point was divisive amongst fans at the time, with many objecting to scene where Stevens gets intimate with the ghost of her former fiancée.
As for her first plot twist, Rhimes recalled the Grey’s season 1 finale where it’s revealed Dr. Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) has a wife despite his ongoing romance with surgical intern Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo).
Rhimes’ best plot twist, however, was not on the medical drama, but rather on her series Scandal. At the of season 3, it’s revealed that Rowan, the main antagonist of the series and head of the black-ops organization B613, is actually Olivia Pope’s (Kerry Washington) father.
Rhimes stepped down as the showrunner of Grey’s Anatomy in 2015, but she continues to be involved as an executive producer. In a recent interview with the Today Show, she admitted she has “no idea” how the long-running series is going to end.
“I’d say back around episode 150 I knew how it was gonna end,” Shonda told Craig Melvin during the Oct. 13 episode of the NBC morning show. “Now we’re at 450 — I have no idea. I mean, I wasn’t sure we’d get past season four or five. So the fact that we’re here in 22, season 22, is insane.”
“I want everybody to end in a really positive, great way,” she added.