Meredith got her groove back! Grey’s Anatomy’s chief of general surgery (played by Ellen Pompeo) has struggled to get back into the dating game after husband Derek Shepherd’s death last season, but on the Thursday, May 12, episode, she successfully got it on with none other than Martin Henderson’s Dr. Nathan Riggs.
The two surgeons practically ripped each other’s clothes off in the Grey-Sloan Memorial parking lot in a surprise turn of events in the closing moments of the show. While viewers may not have expected this pairing (we all saw Riggs and Kelly McCreary’s Maggie flirting, right?!), Pompeo told Entertainment Weekly that this fling — or whatever it is — makes sense.
“I did know early on that [showrunner] Shonda [Rhimes] didn’t want the first person that Meredith was with to be the one,” the actress told the magazine. “She believed there had to be one sort of get it out of the way before she had one that stuck.”
(Guess that means Dr. Thorpe should quit waiting for her … )
With that second notch in Meredith’s belt, Pompeo told the publication that her character is going to keep adding to it.
“Now we’re going to see Meredith have flings with safer people who she knows she can’t fall in love with, and know she can’t really be with, a.k.a. Riggs,” the 46-year-old actress said. “Riggs is super safe because everybody hates him.”
Though the cardiothoracic surgeon may not be Mer’s favorite person due to her friendship with his nemesis, Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd), Henderson hints that things could work out somehow between the two surgeons.
“Neither of them want to have a commitment, at least not to each other, which is funny,” the hunky actor, 41, told EW. “We find out that [Riggs’] take on the relationship, if you could call it that, is actually quite different, and it makes her feel more relaxed. … But it’s going to lead somewhere. But I don’t know where.”
The Grey’s Anatomy season 12 finale airs on ABC Thursday, May 19, at 8 p.m. ET.
