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Maggie Gets a Surprise Visit from Ellis Grey in This Grey's Anatomy Sneak Peek
Sometimes you need a little time with your mom's memory
A very familiar face is heading back to Grey's Anatomy, and TV Guide has a special sneak peek at her return. In Thursday's episode, Ellis Grey (Kate Burton) returns for a little visit to Maggie (Kelly McCreary). Of course, Ellis died many moons ago, so her visit is just in Maggie's mind, but it looks like the mother and her estranged daughter are going to do some bonding.
The clip reveals Maggie in bed reading a letter from Ellis that she's recently discovered. When she begins to read, Ellis appears in the bed next to her and takes over the narration. When Ellis was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease, she wrote a letter to the daughter she gave up for adoption to explain some of the decisions that she made in the past, potentially including why she didn't keep Maggie.
There are a lot of reasons why Maggie might be interested in that information at this point. Thursday's episode will see her and Winston (Anthony Hill) taking care of Meredith's (Ellen Pompeo) kids while Meredith is off in Minnesota with Nick (Scott Speedman), and the newlyweds may be contemplating kids of their own soon, which is sure to prompt questions about their own parents. As we know, Maggie never got a chance to actually meet Ellis Grey before she died, so all of the information she has about her birth mother comes from textbooks and other people's stories.
In last week's episode, Meredith and Amelia (Caterina Scorsone) performed a groundbreaking surgery that could be the first major step in curing Parkinson's Disease. The surgery was successful insomuch as their patient didn't die, but the results of their experiment are still to be determined. If the approach is successful, there's a strong chance the cure could be used on other neurological diseases... including Alzheimer's. It's why Meredith took the project to begin with, but obviously finding a cure for the disease that killed their mother would be of paramount significance to Maggie as well. Being on the precipice of such a medical breakthrough would undoubtedly put Ellis at the top of Maggie's mind.
The big question remains: Where will reading this letter take Maggie, and will it give her a better understanding of the mother she never knew?
Grey's Anatomy airs Thursdays at 9/8c on ABC.