¡SPOILERS AHEAD!
In the most recent episode of 'Grey's Anatomy', which aired on the 1st November, the show paid tribute to the celebrations of el Día de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead). When one paciente in the Seattle hospital tells the Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) about the Mexican tradition during which the dead rise from the earth to visit their loved ones, the ghosts of the doctor's past return to the hospital as a reminder of the people she has lost.
Among those who we see return to her are: her friend George (T.R. Knight), who died in an accident in the fifth season; her mother (Kate Burton), her sister Lexie (Chyler Leigh), both of whom we lost in the eighth season; her husband Derek (Patrick Dempsey); her best friend Mark (Eric Dane) and her dog, Doc. To pull at the heartstrings of the audience even more, playing in the background of the scene was Snow Patrol's 'Chasing Cars', which has been featured several times already in the previous 14 seasons of the show, but this time it was reimagined in Spanish.
Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, the show's executive producer, Krista Vernoff, revealed the inspiration behind this emotional tribute. The idea came from this episode's writer, Kiley Donocan, who, after learning the dates on which her episode would be streamed, pitched the idea to Vernoff of commemorating the festival in an episode. Across the fifteen seasons, the show has never had the opportunity to do so and they believed that this was the opportunity moment. Vernoff added that it was a way to celebrate "a community that is under attack in our country right now", due to the US government, so "that felt important". She also stated that when Donocan first suggested the idea, she had just finished watching 'Coco' with her daughter and that she was "was so moved to discover the idea that there is a day when our people can come back to us". Thus the idea was born: "Let's have [Meredith's] dead people come visit."
The Making of the Return of Meredith's Loved Ones
"We talked about it for four months with the visual effects people. You have to really plan a sequence like that. What I love about that sequence is that we have combined some old footage that aired, some old footage that didn't air [...] and we shot some new stuff," Vernoff added. Additionally, she said that for her the idea was that "we don't know if this is in Meredith's imagination or memory, or if it's actually happening." Some believe in a life after death, others that our dead are able to return to us once a year, and others reject both the previous views, therefore the beauty of this sequence is that it can appeal to any of the various beliefs about our lost loved ones.
