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Disney SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains major spoilers from “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” the Season 22 finale of ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy.”
With the conclusion of Season 22 of “Grey’s Anatomy,” Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital is bidding adieu to two of its longest-standing attendings — trauma Surgeon Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd) and “Cardio God” Teddy Altman (Kim Raver).
It’s been a lengthy run for the doctors, with McKidd having first graced TV screens around the globe as the, in his own words, “tough to love” Dr. Hunt when Season 5 premiered in 2008 — meaning he’s spent 18 years and 17 seasons on ABC’s seemingly never-ending medical drama. Raver made her “Grey’s” debut as Dr. Altman the following year in Season 6, and after departure at the end of Season 8, returned to the cast from Season 15 onwards as the cardiothoracic surgeon audiences know and love.
While Hunt was originally brought into the fold of the hospital by the show’s creator Shonda Rhimes as a romantic interest for then-resident Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh), Altman’s appearance soon after (Hunt, a former Army surgeon, recruited his military colleague to serve as a mentor to Yang) sparked a tumultuous love triangle. Looking back, it was the first plot point in a long, winding romantic arc between Hunt and Altman — since then, the two have confessed their love to one another; had a child; gotten engaged; broken up; got engaged again; gotten married; attempted an open relationship; signed divorce papers; and rekindled for an affair.
Now, their on-again, off-again relationship has finally culminated in the two “walking away into the sunset,” as McKidd puts it. In the finale (directed by McKidd), after an ominous voicemail from Hunt makes it seem as though he died in a bridge collapse, Teddy realizes she doesn’t want to live without him; having saved a family from drowning, Hunt realizes the same thing. After a moving monologue from Altman, Hunt encourages her to accept the role she was offered in the previous episode as the head of a surgical innovation incubator in Paris, and tells her he and the kids will move with her.
In their exit interviews, McKidd and Raver both spoke separately to Variety about their thoughts on Teddy and Owen’s romantic conclusion, their conversations with showrunner Meg Marinis and executive producing director Debbie Allen, how “Grey’s” has changed their lives — and whether either of them have future plans to check back into the hospital for one more shift.
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