Station 19 Finale Sets Up Ben Warren To Return To Grey’s Anatomy, But Will He Really?
Spoiler alert! This story contains spoilers for both the Station 19 series finale and the Grey’s Anatomy Season 20 finale, which both aired May 30 and can be streamed with a Hulu subscription.
The fires that burned around the ABC drama Station 19 were extinguished for good this week, as a “killer” series finale closed out its seven-season run. Showrunners Zoanne Clack and Peter Paige at least had some warning ahead of the series’ 2024 cancellation, allowing them to use their shortened 10-episode season to send many of their firefighters in new directions. As expected, Ben Warren was one of those, and his story seemed to suggest he might rejoin his wife Miranda Bailey and the rest of the surgeons on Grey’s Anatomy. But will he? Here’s what people are saying.
Station 19’s series finale gave a glimpse into the firefighters’ future, and three months after the wildfire that sparked a deadly fire tornado, Ben (Jason George) informed Capt. Andy Herrera that he wanted to return to Grey Sloan Memorial to finish his surgical residency. As of the episode’s May 30 airing, Deadline reports that no deal has yet been reached between Grey's Anatomy and George. However, the sources say the intent is, indeed, to bring him back full time. Zoanne Clack said Station 19 wanted to leave that option open for Grey’s Anatomy showrunner Meg Marinis. Clack told The Wrap:
We wanted to give options. We don’t have any kind of crystal ball about what’s going to happen, but we don’t want to lock in someone that didn’t necessarily need to be locked in. We could have killed Ben off in Episode 5… but I think we’ve set up well that everyone is moving on or moving up, and that seemed to be just the next place to take him. Yeah. Whether or not they take him back is up to Grey’s.
When it looked like Station 19 might be setting the stage for both Ben Warren and Carina DeLuca (Stefania Spampinato, who also started on Grey’s Anatomy before moving to the spinoff) to jump back, Meg Marinis played it coy, saying simply that she hadn’t seen Station 19’s final scripts and didn’t know Zoanne Clack and Peter Paige’s intentions for Ben and Carina.
Now that the series finale has aired, the showrunning duo said Ben embracing his medical training seemed like the logical next step. Peter Paige said in a Deadline interview:
I don’t think anything else would’ve made sense for him. That’s all I’m saying.
Zoanne Clack agreed, but acknowledged that wouldn’t have been the case before Station 19’s cancellation. If a Season 8 would have been in the cards, it sounds like Ben would have remained with his firefighting brethren. Clack said:
For Ben, it felt like a natural progression to what was going to be the end of the series. It wouldn’t have happened had we not had to go. But everyone had to move on and do different things. Push forward. And that felt like where he was going to push.
It will be interesting to see what happens with Ben Warren when Grey’s Anatomy resumes with Season 21 in the fall. The series is already facing budget cuts and losing cast members, and the Season 20 finale saw Ben’s wife Miranda (Chandra Wilson) threatening to quit alongside her first-year interns. Will she even have a job when we see her again? Only time will tell, and in the meantime, check out our 2024 TV schedule to find a show to fill that Seattle-sized hole in your Thursday evenings.
