With Grey’s Anatomy in its 21st season — set to resume on the 2025 TV schedule — we’ve seen characters leave the show in all kinds of ways. Cristina Yang got her dream job in Switzerland; Lexie Grey died in a plane crash; George O’Malley jumped in front of a bus to save a stranger. It was Alex Karev, though, who boasts possibly the most controversial exit, leaving his wife Jo with nothing more than a goodbye letter. Fans were incensed over the betrayal, but surprisingly, Camilla Luddington wasn’t. The actress explained why she actually liked the storyline, and I honestly had never thought of it from that perspective.
After 15 years of playing Alex Karev on Grey’s Anatomy, Justin Chambers decided in 2020 he was ready to pursue other roles. Rather than some of the long, drawn-out goodbyes that we’ve seen, however, midway through Season 16, Alex just disappeared. In notes to Jo Wilson, Meredith Grey and Miranda Bailey, he explained that he’d reconnected with Izzie Stevens and was staying with her to raise the children he hadn’t known about. There was instant backlash from the Grey’s fandom on Jo’s behalf, but Camilla Luddington had a much more thoughtful take, telling Variety:
It’s interesting, because on a lot of shows, you want this moment of being able to tell somebody in a breakup, or see someone in a breakup be able to say, ‘Screw you!’ or have this whole big argument. And in life, there are a lot of breakups where people don’t get that kind of closure. So, I actually really liked that we played a breakup where someone was not going to get that last moment with that other person. So, what does that mean for that character? Well, they have to end up finding closure for themselves.
Personally, I felt like the abrupt exit was disrespectful to the fans who had followed Alex Karev’s journey for so long as well as to one of the Grey’s Anatomy’s OG actors. I also wanted that closure for Jo, because how dare Alex try to say he was doing the honorable thing if that meant just leaving his wife in a letter?
However, I hadn’t thought about it from the perspective of that being a lot of people’s actual experience. Maybe not “breakup by letter” specifically, but it’s true that so many people don’t get that closure and have to find that healing inside themselves. Camilla Luddington said she heard from so many people with those stories:
I remember when [Alex’s goodbye] episode aired, there were a lot of people that actually wrote to me on social media saying, ‘I know this feeling. I know not being able to have that last fight or that last say,’ and just kind of having to find that themselves. I feel like it’s not so common to see that kind of breakup on TV, so I enjoyed it, and I liked that she ended up again having to find that for herself. That’s tough. That’s really tough. But I felt like she’s stronger for it.
Knowing that Alex Karev’s infuriating non-goodbye was something that made so many people feel seen and maybe even helped them process their own experiences definitely takes away some of the bitterness I have over that storyline.
If you want to relive Alex Karev’s Season 16 exit or rewatch any of Grey’s Anatomy’s best eras, the first 20 seasons are some of the best things to binge on Netflix right now, and all 21 seasons so far can be viewed with a Hulu subscription.
