[There are spoilers ahead for last night’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Proceed with caution!]
Last night was the episode Grey’s Anatomy fans had been anxiously waiting for dreading: The farewell for Justin Chambers, who played Dr. Alex Karev. Since he announced he was leaving the show back in January, there’s been tons of speculation as to how it’d go down. The showrunners opted to not show his face, but have him say goodbye to all his friends (including his wife) in letters he sent from a farm in Kansas where he’d gone to live with Izzie Stevens. Basically, fans are livid about this.
Alex had been missing for a good chunk of the season, not responding to calls or texts. Last night’s episode followed Meredith, Jo, and Bailey as they read letters he’d sent, explaining that Izzie had used embryos she and Alex had frozen while she had cancer, and he found out he was a father during Meredith’s medical license hearing. He went to visit her and meet his children, and he couldn’t leave. He broke up with everyone in his life with handwritten letters. LETTERS.
On Reddit and Twitter, fans are actually saying they wished he’d died instead. “I am gonna pretend Alex Karev is dead and DID NOT abandon his entire family for Izzie Stevens,” one Twitter user wrote. Some fans would rather believe their own conspiracy theories, writing things like, “I have decided that Alex Karev died on the way to see his mum and his body was never claimed. End.”
I can’t say I blame them. For 16 seasons, Grey’s Anatomy has worked to mold Alex from a clueless asshole into a somewhat respectable guy. Fans have stuck with him through the good, the bad, and the VERY bad. (Remember when he almost killed Deluca?) So it seems pretty unreasonable to expect viewers to believe that after all that, he would just leave his family for a woman he hasn’t seen in years. I mean, he broke up with his wife in a LETTER. Who does that? No one! Not even Alex, who is very afraid of confrontation!
This storyline makes even less sense when you consider the fact that after Derek died and Meredith disappeared, Alex was the one who went to get her when she was giving birth to Ellis and was ignoring literally everyone in her life. When the situation was reversed, Alex was the one who brought her back to all her friends and family. But now that he’s the one doing the leaving, he’s totally cool with it? It makes absolutely no sense, and it erases all the character development of the last 15 years.
Although Grey’s has relied on the “kill the character off” method a few too many times before, it would have made more sense for Alex to die. That’s the only way he would have actually left his friends, family, job, and home. So, like most of the people on Twitter, I’m going to pretend Alex passed away in a car crash, plane crash, burning building, or something as equally Grey’s. It’s what we deserve!
