Spoilers ahead for the winter premiere of Grey's Anatomy Season 16, called "A Hard Pill to Swallow."
Grey's Anatomy returned to the small screen as the second half of a crossover event with Station 19. The spinoff dealt with the immediate aftermath of the Grey's fall finale that ended with a car crashing into a bar where several major characters were hanging out. Fortunately, none of the major characters died, and there were some happy developments, including Owen finally popping the question to Teddy. Great news for Owen and Teddy, but complicated news for Amelia and her big pregnancy secret! How long can she conceal that Owen and not Link might be the dad?
It probably didn't help that Owen decided to propose to Teddy at the hospital when everybody was just coming down from a crisis, and some of the first people to find out were their respective exes. While Tom was visibly unhappy, Amelia seemed genuinely excited for them. That said, she also backed out of telling Link that there's a chance Owen is the real father of her child, since she conceived a month earlier than she thought, when she and Owen were still together.
Grey's Anatomy showrunner Krista Vernoff weighed in on what's next after the big proposal, saying this to Variety:
What Tom is feeling there is primarily is terrible pain. There is nothing clean or easy about this particular engagement at this moment, because now Amelia is keeping a secret. She’s not just keeping it from Owen and she’s not just keeping it from Link — she’s keeping it from herself. We don’t know who the father of that baby is. And that is a big messy story moving forward with the season. For sure, Tom’s feelings for Teddy, which I think are not entirely unmutual, are a factor moving forward. We talk about Tom and Teddy and Owen and Amelia as a quadrangle, and that story is certainly not complete.
Well, Krista Vernoff's comments suggest fans should strap in for Amelia's secret and the consequences lasting a whole lot longer than just a week or two! As the showrunner noted, Owen and Link aren't the only two people in this mess who don't know the father of the baby. Amelia herself doesn't know. The timing does admittedly point toward Owen more than Link, but pretty much everybody involved would probably be happier if Link is the dad-to-be.
Can anybody really blame Amelia for not wanting to know, at least right away? Owen getting engaged to his longtime flame and mother of his newborn daughter is a pretty good reason for her to be spooked about dropping a major bombshell on him. Of course, Amelia will probably lose some sympathy if she finds out that Owen is the father but lets Link still believe the child is his. Fortunately, the promo for the next episode more or less rules out that scenario.
Link is overjoyed at the prospect of being a dad at this point, and even proposed naming their son "Scout," like in To Kill a Mockingbird. Amelia was seemingly on autopilot at this point, which I can only assume is the reason she didn't point out that To Kill a Mockingbird's Scout was actually a girl whose real name was Jean Louise. But hey, at least Link didn't propose naming the kid Atticus Jr.!
See what happens next for Amelia, Link, and Owen with new episodes of Grey's Anatomy on ABC Thursdays in a new time slot. The show will hopefully reveal what's up with Alex Karev after how the winter premiere explained Justin Chambers' absence, and at least one character is going in a very dark direction. Be sure to tune in!
