Grey's Anatomy Boss Breaks Down the Season 22 Finale Cliffhangers and the Biggest Task for Season 23

Warning: The following contains spoilers from the Grey's Anatomy Season 22 finale. Read at your own risk!

It's an even-numbered finale of Grey's Anatomy, so fans should have been able to expect a pretty warm and happy end of the season. Sarcasm aside, Teddy (Kim Raver) and Owen (Kevin McKidd) do get to exit the series alive, still in love, and embarking on a fun new adventure in Paris. However, there are multiple people in jeopardy, physically and emotionally, as the medical drama sets up a historic 23rd season in the fall. 

Owen survives the bridge collapse, allowing him and Teddy to realize they really don't want to live without each other. He's going to follow her to Paris so they can keep their family intact and give their love another shot. They're leaving behind a hospital in crisis, though. Link (Chris Carmack) is hiding the fact that he's still in a lot of pain after tweaking his injured arm in surgery because Jo (Camilla Luddington) is having a career crisis after her near-death experience giving birth to twins earlier this season. Amelia (Caterina Scorsone) has blown up another relationship after assuming that Toni (Jen Landon) was going back to her ex-wife. The neurosurgeon was hooking up with Cass Beckman (Sophia Bush) when Toni arrived at her apartment to say she wants Amelia and a real relationship. 

Amelia isn't the only Shepherd stuck in an awkward love triangle now. Her nephew Lucas (Niko Terho) is ready to give Simone (Alexis Floyd) another shot, but her current bedmate, Wes (Trevor Jackson), is also ready to take things to the next level. Even though he has treated Simone like crap for most of the season, Wes is definitely ahead in that particular love triangle. Meanwhile, Jules (Adelaide Kane) and Winston (Anthony Hill) are realizing their feelings have gotten very serious, very quickly. They have decisions to make about whether to come clean to the hospital, but their secret relationship may be revealed before they get the chance to make that choice for themselves. 

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Finally, poor Blue (Harry Shum Jr.) was unable to appeal to Richard's (James Pickens Jr.) kinder nature. He is still very fired after performing an experimental procedure on a terminal patient without approval from the FDA or the patient. Is his chance at becoming a doctor truly over now? 

TV Guide caught up with Grey's Anatomy showrunner Meg Marinis to talk about the drama of the Season 22 finale and what she sees is the most pressing problem going into Season 23.  

Let's start with saying goodbye to Teddy and Owen. What does this bridge collapse do for their relationship and commitment that getting divorced and their other drama didn't?
Meg Marinis: It's shocking to everyone that they're leaving. If you go back a few episodes, starting around Episode 14, you see a softening in Teddy about wanting to be with him. When you see them at the rural clinic in Episode 15, you're really seeing the two of them in their element, doing what they love. She is beginning to be faced with the possibility that he may leave Grey Sloan. She's realizing she has feelings about that. It's been slowly seeding through. 

Both of their characters have done individual growth since we first introduced them on the show. Owen came here in Season 5 looking for a connection and a home. Teddy came here looking for Owen, and now he is following his connection, Teddy, off into the sunset. She's choosing herself, but that also involves choosing Owen. 

I think they've come a really long way. It's really right for me to see them end up together and not dead. I did not want to kill these characters. We know that Owen was the one in jeopardy, but I wanted to write him off as a hero. I wanted to have the reverse episode that he had in Season 6 when we saw his squad got killed. I wanted him to be able to save them. I wanted to see him make his decision to follow Teddy for once. I wanted to give that to her. 

Both Teddy and Owen get these beautiful montages at the end of the episode. How do you pick out scenes for those when they've been here for so long?
Marinis: It was a lot. Those montages went through several different versions. I'm really happy with where we ended up. Let me give you some insider information. One of the ones that I felt was missing in Teddy's at the very end was seeing her take charge as chief. We put one of those pieces of her with her walkie-talkie, walking in her tennis shoes with Richard down the hallway. That was really important for me to see. Owen and Derek, with the guys, played golf, which was something that was really important. It was so hard to choose. We went back and forth and back and forth. There are a million ways to do it. We knew that what was important to us was that they had individual montages to honor both characters separately. 

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Meredith decides that she wants to get married. What does a Meredith and Nick wedding look like? I want to put "wedding" in quotes, because it's Meredith.
Marinis: We know she's not a white-dress-with-a-big-bouquet kind of girl. I don't know what that looks like. I think that is going to depend on RJ Decker and the availability of Scott Speedman. (Editor's note: Speedman is the star of ABC's RJ Decker, which has not yet been renewed for a second season.)

On the opposite side of relationship bliss is Amelia, because she hooks up with Cass. Why is Amelia determined to be the main obstacle to her own happiness?
Marinis: We haven't seen her in a love triangle in a very long time. She is the obstacle to her own happiness. She really thought that Toni was going back to her ex-wife. She was really sad, and I think she found a way to make herself feel better. That was Cass Beckman. Now she's saying, "Oh sh**." It's really interesting. We are going to see if this is something Toni can overlook. How is Amelia going to find a way back from this? I love Jen Landon. I think they are a great match. They are a very fun couple. I hope we'll see more of Toni and Amelia next season. I don't know if they're going to have to work together. We'll have to see if Amelia is going to have to win her back or if Toni can easily forgive. 

Also, the other side of the love triangle is Sophia Bush…
Marinis: It's nice for Amelia to have choices. It's nice, but Sophia's character is married. She's in an open marriage. I don't think that Cass is necessarily looking for a new relationship. We'll see what happens. 

Link and Jo are not having a good time either. Can you elaborate more on what's going on with Link and his shoulders?
Marinis: He's in physical pain. It's very subtle. He obviously felt it when they were pulling that woman's pelvis apart. Link is kind of a traditional guy in the sense that he wants to take care of his family. He doesn't want to be seen as weak. He feels like it's his job to be the one to pick everything up when Jo is having a rough time. It's going to depend on whether he comes clean to Jo and tell her he's also having a rough time, or is he going to continue powering through? My instinct is that we'll see him powering through for a little bit and see what happens. 

Obviously, we'll have to wait until next season [to learn more]. I don't want to tell the stereotypical drug abuse storyline. I'd like to be more nuanced than that. It's much more complicated with people who are in pain. And for Jo, it was really important for me to show that after these health scares, everything is not just hunky dory. I wanted to tell the reality of what it looks like to go through this postpartum journey. I think it's a disservice to women to show that Jo is perfectly fine after all of this. Her trigger happens to be work. She walks in every day and has to look at what she went through herself. It's going to depend on can she get help and return to what she loves? Is it healthier to not do what she loves? 

What is it going to take for Link to actually open up to her the way he wants her to open up to him?
Marinis: He's going to need someone to help him realize. Does he talk to someone else next season that's not Jo? Does someone help them back on the right track? He thinks he's taking care of her by not telling her. How do we have that reframed for him? 

Lucas and Simone are still in this love triangle. What does he need to do to prove that he's serious about this? Saying that he doesn't regret sleeping with her doesn't seem like enough to make up for how he's treated her for most of this season. 
Marinis: You're 100-percent correct. He's had a really rough season with the patient storyline we gave him with Katie. We saw him evolve through that storyline. I think it's given him some perspective, not only as a doctor, but just finding out who he is as a person. He's not going to be forgiven so quickly. I think this is definitely coming out between the two of them. He was also really kind to her at the end of the penultimate episode when she was upset about her IVF journey. He was a friend to her. I don't think she realized that both of these guys were going to be options for her in more serious ways than casual sex. There's a lot for her to consider. Wes is new and exciting, and there's a lot she doesn't know about him. Lucas knows so much about her, and that is very comforting. We'll have to see. But you're right, that line alone is not enough to kind of win Simone back. 

Let's talk about Jules and Winston. They have this emotional moment and decide they want to know if anything happens to each other. Does that mean they are going to come clean about their relationship or be each other's emergency contact?
Marinis: I think probably, deep down, they know they need to tell the hospital. They're together. I think that's very scary for both of them. All that Winston has been saying leading up to them getting together is that he's an attending. She's a resident. He could be fired. He doesn't want to jeopardize her career. They're in the beginning steps of talking about coming clean to the hospital, but Ben sees them before they can do that. You know he's going to tell Bailey. 

Kwan is also in a pickle. Richard shut down his appeal without listening at all, and Richard has seen residents do a number of crazy things in this hospital. What is making Richard so reluctant to give him another chance?
Marinis: What Blue did is absolutely a fireable offense. It's interesting that we're finally seeing the hospital be accountable for that. Secondly, Richard has lost this residency program before. It was the residency class before this one. He thinks he's protecting the hospital and keeping the residency class going. It's interesting that he's doing the right thing here. It's really interesting that if you look at Catherine's face, she might not agree with him. It's interesting to see their roles reversed. 

When you get back to the writers room what is the most pressing issue: finding a new chief, a new head of trauma, or the residency program? 
Marinis: I think who is chief is going to be the biggest thing. The people that we have lost are not replaceable. That's not what I'm looking to do. Who is doing what kind of surgeries may have to get shifted. We might be showing different kinds of surgeries. We're not sure yet, but I think probably who is chief is probably the bigger thing that we have to figure out. I have some ideas. 

Grey's Anatomy will return for Season 23 this fall on ABC. Episodes are available to watch on Hulu.