[Warning: The following contains spoilers from the Season 3 finale of Station 19. Read at your own risk!]
Andy (Jaina Lee Ortiz) was seeing ghosts in the Season 3 finale of Station 19 when she showed up at a motel to see her estranged aunt, only to find out that her mother, Elena, was still alive. Ever since Pruitt (Miguel Sandoval) died a few episodes ago, Andy has been looking for answers about her past and why she lost contact with her mother’s side of the family, and memories started to surface that didn’t jive with the story that Pruitt had told her since she was a little girl. Andy was starting to believe that her mother had killed herself, but it turns out the story is obviously a lot more complicated than that.
While Andy was on a search for answers, Robert (Boris Kodjoe) was struggling with the painful side effects of his surgery and wondering where his wife was to help him deal with the crippling pain that could lead him back down the road to addiction without the right support system. With Andy now reeling from her life-changing revelation, it doesn’t look good for the newlyweds and their already troubled marriage.
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And they aren’t the only ones in trouble! Dean (Okieriete Onaodowan) kicked Vic (Barrett Doss) out of the houseboat as his feelings for her grew too intense. She didn’t get that her bestie/roommate/colleague has started to fall for her, which made the eviction pretty damn awkward and something that will probably be a source of friction when Station 19 returns for Season 4.
On a happier note, Maya (Danielle Savre) realized that she had been a total jerk to Carina (Stefania Spampinato) after coming out of denial about her abusive father. She made a grand declaration of love and a pretty good apology in front of Teddy (Kim Ravers), no less. It looks like these two might actually make it! Thank goodness, because we needed some good news after this very tense episode.
TV Guide spoke to Station 19 and Grey’s Anatomy executive producer Krista Vernoff about the episode, which also centered on a bomb scare at Pac North, and what the implications of those twists means for next season.
Jaina Lee Ortiz, Station 19
Andy growing up without a mom and essentially forcing Pruitt to be a parent — including flying to New York to bring him back after 9/11 — has been a core part of who she is for this entire series. How is the knowledge that her mom was never dead going to change her going forward?
Krista Vernoff: In major ways. I think it’s really exciting when you can, when when someone has a core understanding of themselves and their life, and you shake them up fundamentally. It really excites me for Andy and it excites me for who she might become in the wake of it.
How much “undoing” of Pruitt’s legacy could this revelation cause? That’s a pretty big lie to tell your daughter.
Vernoff: We don’t know what happened with Elena. We have an idea. We, the writers, have an idea, but the audience doesn’t know. Andy doesn’t know. If you think back to the scene with the old timers in Episode 312, Pruitt says to them, “That was a tough situation, but I did the best I could.” There were hints at this from Pruitt’s perspective throughout the season because we knew what was coming. I think that there’s great, rich, fertile material for Andy to explore in coming to understand her father better. So, my hope is that it doesn’t have to undo his legacy, but it for sure — it takes him down off a pedestal. It makes him a human being, who had a far more complicated life and relationship than what Andy understood.
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Is Elena coming back going to be a good or bad thing for Andy’s marriage to Robert?
Vernoff: Andy’s marriage with Robert isn’t [in a good place]. Listen, I think it’s a shaky union to begin with. It happened really fast. It was a relationship forged in trauma. They’re both having trauma this season. Andy lost Ryan. She knew her father was dying. Sullivan was wrestling with drug addiction in the wake of the death of his best friend. And they grabbed hold of each other for dear life. That doesn’t mean they can’t build it into a sustainable relationship, but I don’t think it’s an easy relationship to sustain. It’s going to take some work.
There was a hint after they cleared Pac North of the bombs that there were potentially bombs in other hospitals…like Grey Sloan Memorial. Was that going to be the plan for the intended Grey’s Anatomy finale?
Vernoff: I think that if one were to speculate that perhaps there was a bomb situation at multiple hospitals one would not be entirely wrong, but it didn’t it didn’t shake out that way.
Teddy was really insistent that Carina forgive Maya after Maya cheated with Jack. Was that some wish-fulfillment on Teddy’s part after what she did to Owen, or was she just really moved by Maya’s speech?
Vernoff: Teddy has a rich emotional life around cheating and forgiveness based on what she went through and what was illuminated from her deep past all season on Grey’s Anatomy. So, whether it was wish fulfillment or whether she’ll be forgiven — I don’t know. We certainly had plans on Grey’s Anatomy, but what I liked about that Teddy scene is you don’t know! You don’t know what Teddy’s been through. And so I let the scene stay because I don’t feel like it ruined any plans for story that we may continue to tell.
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How is Maya’s realization about her father going to change how she approaches being captain?
Vernoff: Maya coming out of that very painful denial, and recognizing that her father was abusive, is going to change everything…Revelations like that tend to change a human being in myriad ways, and I think it will affect her who she is in relationships, who she is in friendship, and who she is as a captain.
She and Andy have been on different pages all season. Could we see them grow closer as they both struggle with these new perceptions of their respective dads?
Vernoff: They had a fractured friendship that really could repair itself because, yes, they’re going through similar discoveries regarding their fathers. I don’t think that they are similar in that. I don’t think we want to say that Pruitt was abusive, but similar in that their understanding that they didn’t really know their father. Each of them had a different idea about who their father was than what was real.
Do you think that Vic understood what Dean was actually telling her when he was kicking her out of the apartment?
Vernoff: I don’t think she understood at all what he was feeling in that final scene, because I don’t think he communicated at all what he was feeling…I think that he actually tried really hard not to tell her anything about how he was feeling, and I think he was pretty successful. He just kind of seemed like a dick. So, I think that there’s a lot of ground to cover still, in terms of her even understanding that Dean has developed feelings for her and whether or not he’ll reveal that for her this season is a big question mark.
I feel like Dean is not quick to break the rules the way that many other people in that group seem to be. I feel that Dean lost his parents this year. He lost one family. Station 19 is his [other] family. If he were to confess his feelings to Vic and it didn’t go well, it could fracture his friendship and by extension, his whole Station 19 team. So I think he feels that he is being responsible by not indulging in romantic feelings for his friend, who he works with. And I don’t I know that he’s gonna come off that too quickly.
Finally, Travis shut down Baby Dixon at the end of the episode. Does that mean we won’t see him in Season 4?
Vernoff: We love Lachlan [Bucannon, the actor]. I think he did tremendous work this season. I could see more of him in Season 4, I just don’t know yet.
Station 19 returns to ABC next season.