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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Station 19 series finale “One Last Time.”]
Station 19 has bid farewell after seven fiery seasons filled with epic action, beautiful love stories, and cherished friendships. In the series finale, which aired on May 30, the crew battled wildfires and a grisly fire tornado that put everyone’s lives in jeopardy.
The final episode included flash-forwards during moments of crisis and showed viewers the characters’ potential futures. One flash-forward featured the return of a beloved character in a touching moment that brought Vic’s (Barrett Doss) story full circle.
Below, Station 19 showrunners Zoanne Clack and Peter Paige opened up to TV Insider about crafting the series finale, if those flash-forwards are actually reality, and the future of the characters in the Grey’s Anatomy universe.
How did you decide on that final flash-forward given that Station 19 exists within the current Grey’s Anatomy universe?
Zoanne Clack: We had some thoughts about what we could do that wouldn’t mess up their universe, and part of what we were going with was that these flash-forwards are not set in stone. They are what the characters are living for, what they dream about would be their future, and helping them to push on and move forward throughout their obstacles of almost losing their lives. We tried to go in on times of stress and near loss, and that was what was pushing the flash-forwards. They aren’t necessarily the truth here, but they are the futures that these characters believe and help them push forward.
Peter Paige: It’s about what they value and what it is they’re trying to create in their lives.
So when the show flashes to the future at the end of the episode, is that canon?
Paige: That’s supposed to be pretty canon.
Clack: Act 6 is the real future, and the flash-forwards are a supposed future.
I was so happy to see that Pru became a firefighter in the future.
Clack: We never had a thought of not doing that.
Paige: It was so right there. The actress who plays grown-up Pru is our key makeup artist’s daughter. We were in a meeting saying, “Oh, we’re going to need an older Pru.” And she was like, “Oh!” All of a sudden, my phone pings, and I look down, and there’s a picture of her daughter. I was like, “Why do you have a picture of grown-up Pru? What is this?” She was like, “That’s my daughter.”
In Vic’s dream flash-forward, Dean [Okieriete Onaodowan] makes an appearance. How important was it to bring him back to help close out Vic’s story?
Clack: It was funny because we were looking for Vic’s flash-forward for a while. We knew that we couldn’t show her with Travis because we wanted that to be a surprise for Act 6, so that kind of ruined the initial flash-forward that we wanted to tell. But it was really important that we show that Vic really took CrisisOne. And, you know, we had this thing in Season 6 where she went back to school to get a psychology degree, and I really wanted to pay that forward. So, you’ll notice that she has a PhD in psych now, and she’s really taking the thing forward. What we felt was the most heart-wrenching and really got to your soul was to bring back the reason for all of it. The way that she moved forward and to know that Dean was proud of her was really the breakthrough that we had. Like, maybe the third day of filming, we were still kind of figuring out exactly how we wanted to tell that story, and then we realized that bringing Dean back would be an amazing conclusion and a very satisfying ending for her journey. We called him up one day, made our case, and he stopped us and was like “I’m there. I’m coming in.” He flew in from New York and made that moment really happen. It was beautiful.
Were there other past cast members you wanted to bring back for the series finale?
Paige: There were more. In an earlier version of Andy’s flash-forward, you got to see her whole family. There was a version where we got to see Jack’s family. We put pretty much every major recurring character on hold. Pretty much, not 100 percent, but a lot of them were on hold because we wanted to touch base with them. To their credits, by the way, we called them out and said look, “We have one episode. We want to honor the series.” Tracie Thoms came back to “woot.” You don’t get an actor of Tracie’s caliber to come in and “woot” unless she’s proud of having been a part of the show. And we were in no way disrespecting them [by not having more]. It was the exact opposite. It was, we want to honor what you’ve contributed, but you can’t quite fit them all in.
Were there other endings you considered when writing this final episode?
Clack: When we found out we were canceled, we started thinking about, what do we want to see in these last moments of the show? And then we worked from that. We knew we wanted to see Andy being chief and Maya and Andy working together in this new version of Station 19. I actually had this vision of this kind of Norman Lear ending where it’s all empty, you turn out the lights, and then you leave. But Peter made a really good point that we really wanted to carry this tradition on. Even though we weren’t making the show, the station and the philosophies and the values and everything that we worked to pull into the show was still valid and going on in the background, so we kind of merged the two. We had that nice moment of Andy just being in the firehouse alone and being able to say goodbye to her father, and then having her go out into heaven or something.
Hopefully not heaven yet!
Clack: It wasn’t heaven, just beautiful bright lights.
Paige: It was just a particularly sunny day.
Clack: We were definitely towards that ending and trying to figure out how we could know what’s going on with their futures.
Disney / Eric McCandless
Travis joining Vic at the airport was my favorite scene. Did you ever think about keeping him back in Seattle? Earlier in the episode, he said he couldn’t go with her.
Clack: There were different versions of that, but always that. At one point, he was going to be in a cab, and you’re going to think he was going on this worldwide trip with Dom, but he showed up for Vic at the curbside. With budget and time, it became what it is, which is just beautiful. The set design built that out of our ICU set.
Paige: One of the things we were talking about in the writers’ room as we’re crafting the season and every episode is, where’s the rom-com? That’s part of the Shondaland vocabulary, right? We wanted to do it in a way that was a little fun and a little special. And so we did what we call platon-com, as somebody whose great loves of my life are my friends so far, like Krista Vernoff is the Vic to my Travis, and I wanted to celebrate that. I wanted to give the same weight as a great rom-com reveal, and I think we succeeded at that in a way that makes me very, very happy and proud.
Clack: I will also say that there were arguments about, should some people die, should that happen? There was never an argument about should Travis go with Vic? It was always going to be that. We were always going to do that.
Have you had discussions with the Grey’s team about bringing characters over, like Ben and Carina? Or will that be a decision made by the Grey’s team?
Clack: The second thing.
Was there talk of showing the future when Maya and Carina’s baby is born? Or could we see that next season on Grey’s Anatomy?
Paige: Who knows what Grey’s will decide to do with those characters? As a fan, I hope that they bring them over and utilize them because I think they’re amazing artists and amazing characters to write for, but that’s not our purview there.
What was the last scene filmed before the show wrapped?
Paige: The penultimate scene was everybody under the table with Vic. We ended it together, and it was brutal and beautiful and all those tears are so real. I mean, that scene is just full of real tears. We finished that and wrapped everybody except for Andy. We sent Andy to hair and makeup, she got changed over, we all hung out, we may or may not have had a drink, and then we shot the very last shot of the series. We very purposefully directed that in such a way that everyone could be there, be present, could witness it, could honor it, and feel a part of it. When we finally got the third take, that was a wrap, and then we laughed and cried and danced it out. It was a really brutal day, but it was also an unbelievably beautiful thing.
Clack: What was funny about that day is that I kept trying to convince Peter and the production team to change the order so that everybody would wrap up at the same time, so they wouldn’t have to wait hours for Jaina to go into hair and makeup because we had to age her and do all this stuff. But what happened was everybody got wrapped except for Jaina. We had those moments, and then it was such a testament to how the family on the screen was actually also the family behind the scenes because everyone stayed for that last scene. We all just huddled around the monitors while Jaina was acting, while she was in the makeup and all of that, and then we had our big party and really danced it out and everything. It made it even more beautiful that people didn’t have to be there, but they wanted to be there. It was gorgeous. It was beautiful. It was sad.