Grey's Anatomy has revealed a big spoiler about the remaining four episodes of season 12 — someone's going to die. Will it be April, tragically dying in childbirth, but not before telling Jackson she always loved him as he tearfully names their daughter after her? Will it be Jo, whose relationship with Alex is infuriatingly undefined, yet whose death (if set to the right indie rock song) would leave the audience in desperate need of tissues? Will it be the stalker doc who took Meredith on a date once, because why the hell not?
I'm a devoted Grey's fan. I've stuck in there for 12 seasons (!), dozens of deaths, and that episode where the doctors sing "How to Save a Life" while working on a patient in one of the most bizarrely self-referential moments ever on network TV. And I honestly do not care which Grey's doctor or patient meets an untimely end by the finale.
That's not to say I don't care about the show. Grey's has bounced back from its multi-season slump, and I'm as invested as ever. But the show has also proven it's the medical-drama equivalent of Game of Thrones. Fan favorite deaths can hurt, and often spark Twitter and Tumblr rants lamenting that the show will never recover from the loss. And then, a few episodes later, their absence is barely felt.
New relationships form between characters who rarely interacted, allowing for writers to explore new dynamics and introduce new story lines. "Meredith and Derek, Mostly Happy Couple" made for pretty bland TV. But "Meredith & Her Sisters — Sleepover Edition" is fascinating, full of new secrets to discover and new power plays to explore. George's death was sad, but a necessary shake-up to the core group of original interns, a sort of forced graduation that made characters reevaluate who they wanted to be at the hospital if they weren't simply Bailey's former charges, growing older and moving up, together.
Are there characters whose deaths would upset me more than others? Definitely. I'm not the least bit emotionally invested in Wilmer Valderrama's sexy guitar player, a likely candidate to go to the great Seattle Grace-Mercy West-Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital in the sky. April and Jackson's drama may have gotten old this season, but I'm still 100% shipping Japril, and I'd be sad to see the only thing that could forever destroy their on-again, off-again romance — death. But I know whoever winds up on year-end character in memoriam video, Grey's Anatomy will be back in the fall, full of new love triangles to debate, new friendships to root for, and enough unheard of medical conditions to keep me nervously checking WebMD on a weekly basis.