Happy Thursday and start of semester 2 RCL blogging!! This time around i’ve decided to do something a bit different than my fall book blog/rating/summaries. While i’m still going to incorporate a bit of my own opinion into each piece and will be summarizing their character as a whole and the way that their deaths affected other characters and the show overall. I’ll go into slight detail on the way they died as well but it won’t be the main focus. With that being said, I feel that a good starting point is the woman that raised main character Meredith Grey, and the reason for much of her trauma, Ellis Grey.

In terms of emotional impacts for viewers, this death wasn’t one that hit very hard, at least not for me. In the seasons leading up to her death, we watched as the emotional trauma from growing up with a mother so ruthlessly focused on careers over personal happiness like Ellis Grey affected Meredith in all aspects of her life. Though she did have Alzheimers, and her appearances on the show emphasized the deterioration she experience at the hands of her disease, all as her daughter watched helplessly, Ellis’ treatment of Meredith during both lucid and non-lucid states was far from motherly, and left viewers including myself with a bit of a bad taste in our mouths as far as opinions on her go. With that being said, I shouldn’t be too harsh, as any death is tragic, and this one can be seen as ever more-so than most from Meredith’s standpoint, who was not only losing her mother for years before her actual passing, but wasn’t even able to have a meaningful conversation with Ellis in her final days, much less hear how proud of her daughter she likely would have been for the more than successful surgeon she had become.

Ellis’ death itself was very sudden, just as most deaths on this show go, and came at an already very dramatic time. Meredith was fighting for her life in the hospital after falling into the water at the scene of a ferry boat crash. She didn’t attempt to save herself and was giving up when she was rescued from the water and rushed to the ER. At the same time, Ellis was also in the hospital and being treated for a recently discovered heart condition. As Meredith coded and hallucinated a conversation in the afterlife with Ellis during which she told Meredith that she is “anything but ordinary” and she needs to run back, Ellis was also fighting for her life. Meredith was able to be brought back and made a full recovery, however Ellis did not win her fight, and died of a heart attack.

As far as lasting impacts on the other characters of Grey’s Anatomy, Ellis is a unique one. Although she died of a heart attack during season 3, which was very early on in what has now become a 19 season series, there is no lapse in mention of her, flashback appearances, and even new children of hers as the show develops. In season 10 it’s revealed that she had an affair, and the lovechild of her and co-worker Richard Webber showed up as a new employee at the hospital, turning Merediths life upside down once again. She may have technically been “gone” as of season 3 episode 17, but Ellis Grey was most certainly not forgotten.

*Images from https://screenrant.com/greys-anatomy-every-harper-award-winner/ & https://www.insider.com/saddest-greys-anatomy-character-deaths-2019-5