The dramas, the romances, the fights, and even the surgeries — if those elevator doors could talk, they would have a whole lot to say!
The elevators at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, né Seattle Grace, have witnessed a ton of Grey’s Anatomy history over the course of 20 seasons. We’re talking about blood, sweat, tears, and furious make-out sessions. Not to mention actual full-out surgeries and sexual tension-filled run-ins, and yes, we are also certainly talking about proposals. There have been romantic moments, and hilarious moments, and absolutely gutting tragic moments inside those elevators. Simply put, the Grey’s Anatomy elevators are a storied, holy place. While the list of the most memorable Grey’s moments to happen in an elevator is extensive, below we’re looking at the 10 (okay, fine, 11) that have managed to stay with us long after those elevator doors closed.
George O’Malley really needed a win. He was branded with the 007 (license to kill, remember?) moniker after a solo surgery gone wrong, he has been friend-zoned by all the women in his life, and no one takes him seriously. Seriously. But then, there’s a power outage just as George and Alex are taking a police officer with a gunshot wound in the chest up to surgery, and the elevator stops. The guy’s going to die if they don’t intervene. Through a little crack in the elevator door, Dr. Burke says they’re going to have to open him up right there in the elevator. He hands the instruments over toward where Alex is standing, but Alex freezes — he refuses to take them. Now, in Alex’s defense, even if at this juncture he is still the biggest tool on the planet, he’s having a rough go — he’s recently learned he failed his intern exam and has to retake it, and now he’s in his head so much so that he lashes out at Izzie during their first date. Being an ass and pushing people away in his time of need is his way! But then, there’s George. When he realizes Alex is flaming out, he steps in, takes the instruments, and saves that man’s life. Is there a more satisfying moment than when George asks for the tools he’ll need next, and Burke realizes George has this under control, and he seems impressed and proud? George finally gets a moment to show everyone they’ve underestimated him, and he gets to do it right in front of his biggest bully. “We’re not in Kansas anymore,” indeed!
I know this is technically two moments, and you might think that’s cheating, but stop being a narc. These two moments are echoes of each other and beg to be discussed together! I mean, even the season and episode numbers are inverses of each other! Both are set to “Today Has Been OK”! When you think about these two moments as a pair, oof, the emotional impact hits even harder — which is saying something because these both take place in absolutely devastating episodes.
In “Into You Like a Train,” Derek has just told Meredith that he is choosing his marriage over her, and then he’s part of the case with the train crash victims who have been impaled — you remember the case: It was seared into our collective memory when it ripped our hearts out and stomped on them, emotionally speaking — and he basically holds Bonnie’s hand throughout the whole thing, having to inform her that she is going to have to die to save Tom’s life. He’s the one who delivers her final message to her fiancé. Honestly, I can’t believe he’s standing afterward, let alone trying to hold it all in on that elevator with Bailey. But she sees he is about to break wide open, and without saying anything, she pulls the emergency stop and lets him have a moment to let it out. When he’s finished, she makes sure he’s good and then pushes the button again. They never talk about it, and they never need to — she knows exactly what he needs at that moment.
There are a lot of iconic visuals from Grey’s Anatomy, but who could ever forget this one? Meredith Grey standing there on the elevator with her Hello Kitty Band-Aid covering a huge pimple, and Derek Shepherd standing right behind her, almost touching, but not. They can’t be together — well, they could, but Derek is “fighting” “for” “his” “marriage” (please know I infused each word with as much disdain as possible), even though they both very clearly love each other. After attempting to pretend Derek doesn’t exist, Meredith is exhausted. When she gets on the elevator with him one last time (so many elevator run-ins in this episode!), she can’t pretend anymore. Facing forward, she says, “I miss you.” You can tell Derek wants to say it back, but he has chosen Addison and has just been reminded what it means to honor “the ring,” so he can’t. He gets right up behind her; he smells her hair but stops himself. He wants to kiss her so bad! We want him to kiss her so bad! But he whispers, “I can’t,” and then gets off at the next floor.
“I bet you wish you’d taken the stairs right about now.”
Season 4, episode 13: “Piece of My Heart”
Mark Sloan was a king amongst men! Sure, he did things like grow skin flaps for tiny baby hearts and made us all swoon as a man head over heels for Lexie Grey, but he also was hilarious. RIP, my man! Take, for instance, this moment when he walks into an elevator with Derek, Derek’s ex-wife Addison, Derek’s ex-girlfriend Meredith, and Derek’s current girlfriend Rose. All he can do is laugh and deliver a perfect line to his buddy: “I bet you wish you’d taken the stairs right about now.” We love you, Mark!
[sounds of uncontrollable, joyful sobbing]
Season 5, episode 19: “Elevator Love Letter”
I mean, the episode is called “Elevator Love Letter,” so you just know it’s going to be good elevator content. But this good? Babes! We never knew we’d get it this good. If you recall, around this time, Derek went dark. He killed a pregnant woman in the OR and took it hard. Remember his Sad Man Beard? Remember how he ends up taking the engagement ring he bought for Meredith and launching it into the wilderness with a baseball bat in front of her? So, yeah, dark. But Meredith pulls him back from the brink when she basically begs him to get a grip and save a cancer-ridden Izzie’s life. When he almost backs out right before he’s supposed to cut into Izzie’s brain, it’s Mer who tells him he can do it — she believes in him.
After a successful surgery and a little reminder from Webber that Meredith Grey doesn’t scare easily, Derek does, in fact, get a grip. With some logistical assistance from Webber, he is waiting for Meredith at the end of the day when she goes to hop in an elevator. When the doors open, there he is, and the entire elevator is covered in scans, and patient files, and documents that tell the story of their relationship from their very first surgery. It’s their love story up on those walls. It is also probably a huge HIPAA violation … but come on, this is romance, people! He doesn’t need to say much, just the simply swoony: “I love you, Meredith Grey, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” She says yes. We all say yes.
An elevator to the afterlife
Season 5, episode 24: “Now or Never”
Raise your hand if sometimes you can hear Ellen Pompeo’s voice saying, “Did you say it?” and you still, after all this time, tear up. You are not alone! That voiceover will forever be attached to trauma because it plays over the final moments in one of Grey’s most emotional season finales (which, as Grey’s fans, we know is saying something). They’ve just realized that the John Doe hit by a bus is actually George O’Malley, and he is crashing in the OR. Izzie Stevens begins to heal from her post-surgery memory loss and then immediately goes unconscious. Suddenly, we see Izzie in her pink prom dress from when Denny died, and she gets on an elevator. When the doors open, she finds George standing there in his military uniform. Both of them are fighting for their lives. Will one of them die? Both of them? Okay, so we found out not long after that T.R. Knight was leaving the show, so it wasn’t that much of a shocker when George died in the season six premiere, but still, how rude is that cliff-hanger? Elevator, we trusted you! Just kidding — that elevator makes no promises!
An elevator ride with Gary Clark — yep, that guy
Season 6, episode 23: “Sanctuary”
There are several harrowing elevator-related moments in Grey’s Anatomy’s unforgettable pair of hospital shooting episodes — Alex in a pool of his own blood, Bailey doing anything she can to get Charles Percy on an elevator but failing — but the one that remains the most unsettling comes early on in the first episode when we find Cristina alone on an elevator with a man asking for directions to the chief of surgery’s office. We, the audience, have just watched this man, Gary Clark, kill Reed point-blank and then shoot Alex in the chest, but no one in the hospital knows this yet. When Cristina steps into the elevator, she is blissfully unaware of the carnage that has just begun and speaks to this guy casually, like she would to anyone else asking for directions; she’s actually quite helpful! But the entire time, we are holding our breath wondering if he is going to shoot her too, until he steps off the elevator and tells her to have a nice day. It’s a short scene but an impossible one to shake off.
If you recall, at this point in the series, we are knee-deep in a little love triangle situation for Meredith’s heart. On the one hand, new ortho god Link is very hunky and charming. On the other hand, our Italian resident Andrew DeLuca is so in love with Meredith, it’ll make you sweat. Her head seems to point her toward Link, but come on, it was pretty clear from the get-go that she’d wind up with DeLuca. And in this episode, after Meredith and DeLuca get trapped in an elevator during a massive windstorm, it is more than obvious. Not only does DeLuca open up to her about his infamous surgeon father, but he also says wildly romantic things to her in Italian like, “When you finally let me kiss you, and you will let me kiss you, I won’t ever stop.” There’s no other way to put this, but that is so freaking hot. And it turns out Meredith knows a little Italian too, so she gets that message loud and clear. The two go in for a kiss, it’s going to be so good, you can feel it, and then the elevator doors open. I guess after 15 seasons, those elevators just live for the sexual tension. What a tease!
Fun bonus elevator content: For a visual that will never leave you, this is also the episode in which facility manager Jay’s legs get chopped off by an elevator!
What a gorgeous little full-circle moment Derek’s two wives get when Addison returns to Grey Sloan to perform a uterine transplant during a heat wave. Meredith and Addison shared many an awkward elevator ride over the years as things sorted themselves out between the two of them and Derek, so it feels right that we get to see how far they’ve come in an elevator too. At the last minute, Meredith “abdominal wall transplant” Grey has to assist with Addison’s surgery, and the two pull it off. While all the interns gossip about their tension-filled past, the two women hop into the elevator to ride the high of what they just accomplished. Almost immediately, Addison bursts into tears, and Meredith hits the emergency stop button to let her have her moment (sound familiar?). It’s the first time since Derek’s death that she’s really had to deal with him being gone. She thought she would feel him here, but he’s gone, she says. She is forced to confront her grief. But Meredith reminds her that, no, he isn’t gone; he is very much alive in his three children, and she would very much like for Addison to meet them. The scene ends with the two women side by side, holding each other.
Japril is the endgame
It’s short but sweet, and the perfect little punctuation to the saga that is Japril. We kind of knew this couple would most likely get back together off-screen when Jackson asked April, freshly divorced from Matthew, to move with him to Boston in season 17 so that he can run the Catherine Fox Foundation and have his daughter with him — and she said yes. The sparks flying between the exes at that moment pointed to a romantic reunion down the line, but still, wasn’t it nice to actually see it and know for sure? When Jackson and April return to Grey Sloan while Catherine’s getting treatment, they mostly spend the day apart. At the very end of the episode, however, as they get ready to head home, they hop in the elevator and share a sweet, loving kiss. They look so happy to be together! Not only does it mean that Japril is forever, but even though both aren’t around anymore, they were also given a nice parting Grey’s moment: a kiss in an elevator while “Chasing Cars” is playing. It doesn’t get more Grey’s Anatomy than that.