Grey’s Anatomy season 12 tackled life at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital without its McDreamy! Here’s everything you need to remember!
Bailey: The new Chief of Surgery
After beating out other candidates, Miranda Bailey was finally appointed Chief of Surgery. Her first day was rough, especially since she somewhat scorned her mentor Weber and didn’t want his advice at first.
However, after a whirlwind day, Weber was there when Bailey seemed ready to give up. Weber told Bailey that she needed to inspire the surgeons, instead of chasing them. One speech later, Bailey seemed to win everyone over with her determination to learn from her mistakes.
Maggie and DeLuca became a thing
After both Maggie and DeLuca had a horrible day at the hospital, they went to the bar to drink. Maggie revealed, while drinking, that she dated a guy for six months while Meredith was M.I.A., but now he’s getting married to someone else. Meanwhile, DeLuca had worked a case with Alex that ended with a baby dying.
So what do they do? Hook up, of course. Naturally, they end up developing feelings for one another but decide to keep it secret for the time (this is a theme you might notice in our Grey’s Anatomy season 12 recap).
Penny
When Derek died, a lot of things went wrong. One of his doctors felt particularly responsible, but Meredith was the bigger person and told her to learn from it. Meredith probably wasn’t expecting that same doctor to show up at her door for dinner.
When Callie showed up with Penny at her door, Meredith tried to play it cool. She mostly succeeded until it was revealed that Penny was coming to work at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. She announced to the table that it was Penny that basically killed Derek, and Amelia lost it.
Nathan
April had her friend from the military bring a boy over to Seattle for Jackson to help. While Nathan seemed nice and everything, it was quickly revealed that Owen had a big problem with him. Once Owen found out Nathan was there, he ordered him to leave, but no one knew why.
When Owen’s mother came to the hospital to visit her boyfriend who had been injured, she was delighted to see Riggs. That just added to the mystery even more.
Later on it was revealed that Owen blames Riggs for the death of his sister. Riggs and Owen’s sister had been dating, but Riggs was cheating. When Owen’s sister found out, she jumped on a chopper to go see Owen, but it was shot down.
Alex proposed to Jo
After feeling like she was second choice to everyone, Jo got fed up. She tried to break up with Alex after it became clear that he was prioritizing Meredith over her. To be fair, Meredith had been going through a lot. The problem, however, is that Alex didn’t see he was putting down Jo in the process of trying to help his friend.
It became evident that Alex and Jo were not on the same page when he decided to propose to her. You want to leave? Here’s a ring!
Meredith’s attack
It’s doubtful anyone could forget what happened to Meredith when a confused patient attacked her, leaving her critically injured. Possibly the scariest thing about the attack was that it happened in the middle of the hospital and yet no one found Meredith until it was too late.
Penny became something of a savior to Meredith, as she was the first one to find her. When Meredith was still healing her broken bones, with a mouth wired shut, and went into a panic attack because her kids didn’t want to see her, Penny was there to help. Eventually, Meredith was well enough to go home, but the emotional scars from the attack lingered.
April’s secret
Jackson and April may be the rockiest couple of all time on Grey’s Anatomy. They started out as best friends, then became friends with benefits, and then were barely friends when April regretted losing her virginity to Jackson before being married. It all worked itself out when April and Jackson decided to run off and get married. Or at least it seemed that way.
The fact that they have completely different beliefs quickly stirred up trouble in their marriage. They were awful at compromising and they only drifted apart further when April got pregnant and learned their son had a rare condition.
After losing their child, April could barely function. She decided to start over and left to go overseas with Owen to help in a war zone. When she got back, all April and Jackson did was fight about her leaving. Instead of healing together, they only caused more problems by fighting.
When Jackson decided he’d had enough of trying to work things out, April agreed to sign the divorce papers. What he didn’t know was that April was pregnant again. She had decided not to tell him in the hopes that he would chose to stay with her on her own, and not out of guilt.
Once Jackson did find out about the pregnancy, it predictably only caused more arguments.
Custody battle
After thoroughly impressing all of the surgeons at Grey Sloan Memorial, Penny won a grant to go do research in New York for a year. Everyone was excited about it, except for Callie, who remembered what happened the last time she was in a relationship and the other person left.
When Penny asked Callie to go with her, and Arizona told her that they should try to work it out, Callie decided to do it. What Arizona wasn’t expecting was for Callie to try to take Sofia with her. Arizona went right to a custody lawyer, ready to fight for her rights.
Neither Callie nor Arizona seemed ready to back down on their stance and got ready to head to court. That meant asking their friends, many of whom they shared, to take sides on the matter and appear before the judge.
Court got ugly and plenty of feelings were hurt. It seemed like both Callie and Arizona regretted letting their disagreement go that far. This was especially true for Callie, who ended up losing the battle. Custody was granted to Arizona.
On the plus side, Arizona realized how miserable Callie was about the whole situation, so Arizona came around and told Callie that Sofia could go to New York — but on her conditions.
In case you missed the news, that was supposed to be Callie’s big goodbye because Sara Ramirez will not be returning for Grey’s Anatomy season 13.
Riggs and Meredith
This felt like it happened in the blink of an eye. One minute Meredith and Riggs were arguing, and the next they were making out — hot and heavy. Later, they teased each other about the number of times they had sex that night.
Meredith wants to keep it casual, but that never works out for anyone. Plus, Maggie developed feelings for Riggs — yikes!
Marriages
In the Grey’s Anatomy season 12 finale, two marriages came to light. First, fans got to see the back-and-forth thought process of Amelia, who had planned a quickie wedding with Owen.
Was it rushed? Absolutely. Was she making the right choice? That’s what the focus was. For a while the pair had been quite casual, so it seemed like a jump to make the big commitment.
Meredith might not have been the best person to turn to, as she’s always one to run away from problems. She did manage to be there for Amelia, though, and got the wedding on the road, after a slushie run, and Owen wedded Amelia.
Fans also learned of another marriage that happened some time ago and that no one knew about. The whole season had Alex pushing for more from Jo and her not wanting to. Now fans knew why. Jo was married already that whole time, to another man that she had to run from because he was abusive.
Since Jo didn’t tell Alex, and instead told DeLuca, things became a sticky mess, especially since Alex thought he walked in on them hooking up, when DeLuca was trying to help drunk Jo get home safe. Instead of finding out what was happening, Alex beat DeLuca up.
April’s emergency
So far, everything had been going great in April’s pregnancy. But since it’s Grey’s Anatomy, that can’t last. During Amelia and Owen’s wedding, April and Ben had to rush to Meredith’s house to get something. That’s when April’s contractions really started kicking in and she didn’t want to go to the hospital and deliver her baby in a car.
Their solution? Ben would deliver the baby himself, in Meredith’s house, with an old medical kit, while Arizona talked him through a c-section. Jackson listened in horror over the phone as April screamed.
A happy ending was granted for our Grey’s Anatomy season 12 recap, as April and the baby got to the hospital before anything worse happened. When fans left April and Jackson, they were in baby bliss.
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