Will ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Actually Kill Someone With That Explosion (& Does It Need To)?

With Grey’s Anatomy Season 22’s premiere just a couple of weeks away at this point, the clues about what to expect from the return after that big explosion have continued piling up. But what do they point to?

Well, the latest is this: TV Line spoke to the season’s showrunner, Meg Marinis, who hinted at a couple of Grey Sloan Memorial surgeons’ fates. In the interview, she revealed that Teddy Altman (Kim Raver) and Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd) will lead separate lives after their big breakup scene, which means both of them are almost certainly in the clear. Marinis also indicated that Ben Warren (Jason George) might be getting a second lease on surgical life with Teddy as a result of the explosion chaos — “She may not have been seeing what he has to offer,” she said — so that means Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson) is probably going to be fine.

The biggest question is, of course, whether Atticus “Link” Lincoln (Chris Carmack) will survive since he was in an actual operating room at the time of the blast. To TV Line, Marinis confirmed that both Amelia Shepherd (Caterina Scorsone) and Jo Wilson (Camilla Luddington) will have major reactions to Link’s outcome — but what that is remains unclear. Couple that with this tease from the showrunner’s interview with Entertainment Weekly: “We clearly saw Link in immediate danger. We’ll just have to see whether Link makes it through this explosion…” At this point, it’s starting to feel like a “thou doth protest too much”-style situation where Link’s death would just be too obvious. The real subversion of expectation would be if he survived to see his twin daughters with Jo born, despite being squarely in the midst of danger, and it was someone else who perished … or no one at all.

Elsewhere, there are signs that Monica Beltran (Natalie Morales) will be OK thanks to a behind-the-scenes shot, and Jules Millen (Adelaide Kane) was right next to her at the time. Simone Griffith (Alexis Floyd) didn’t look like she’d just lost her boyfriend in a catastrophe in the first Season 22 stills, so Lucas Adams (Niko Terho) could also be fine.

Nothing is certain about any of this, of course, but we’re starting to wonder whether there’ll actually be any casualties of the explosion at all. We’ve been repeatedly promised “chaos,” but that doesn’t necessarily mean carnage.

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But if Link survives, and everyone else does, too, would that be too much of a bait-and-switch after a summer full of nail-biting anticipation? Grey’s Anatomy has certainly set a precedent that few characters have true plot armor, so does the show need to kill off a character after leaving us on that explosive end to maintain the inertia of the show? After all, it’s been a while… The last major character to die on Grey’s was Andrew DeLuca (Giacomo Gianniotti) in Season 17. Or is it better if everyone emerges unscathed, despite the severity of the incident? Hit the poll below to weigh in with your vote!

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Grey’s Anatomy, Season 22 Premiere, Thursday, October 9, 10/9c, ABC

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