The saddest episodes of Grey's Anatomy can also be some of the most poignant. They allow the audience to connect with the characters as they suffer heartbreaking losses or grieve the outcomes of difficult decisions. Sadness that transcends the television program and allows the audience to feel what the characters are feeling provides for a cathartic television viewing experience.

Related

Grey's Anatomy Season 21: Release Date, Cast, Story, Trailer & Everything We Know

No medical drama has had the staying power of Grey's Anatomy, and the long-running ABC series returns for its landmark 21st season

Posts 1

20 "Cold As Ice"

Season 14, Episode 23

The main focus of Grey's Anatomy season 14. episode 23, "Cold as Ice" is April, who is at death's door. April is planning Alex and Jo's wedding and seems to be warming up to everyone. Later, a car accident victim is brought in, and when they see it is Matthew Taylor, he asks if April is okay as she was in the car with him. Since she wasn't with Matthew, everyone freaks out, and Owen heads to the accident scene and finds April unconscious in a ravine below the road. She is hypothermic and unresponsive.

Luckily, April survives this experience. However, this is a very sad Grey's Anatomy episode regardless because the entire episode plays out as a tribute to the character and shows everything she has been through, what she means to everyone, and how important she is to the hospital and TV show. The show also looks at other characters, such as Meredith, who re when she almost drowned, and the entire emotional weight overwhelms even her, making this a tough one to get through.

19 "Leave A Light On"

Season 16, Episode 16

The sad emotions in "Leave a Light On" are not because of a death or someone getting severely injured as many Grey's Anatomy fans are used to. Instead, they're the result of a decision that a beloved character makes when he chooses to break someone's heart, which turns everyone against him. This is the episode where Alex Karvev leaves Grey's Anatomy. It remains one of the most controversial moments in the series because Alex goes completely against his character development in doing so.

Alex abandons everyone in Seattle, including his wife Jo, and leaves to reunite with Izzie and his children in Kansas. This gives Alex a happy ending since he has always wanted to be with Izzie and is giving their relationship a second chance (after not seeing her for a decade). However, what makes this sad is that viewers are left watching his wife and friends read letters he wrote before leaving. It was a very emotional moment as Jo was left betrayed by the man she loved and left with only a letter.

18 "Drowning On Dry Land"

Season 3, Episode 16

The season 3 episode looked like it might do the unthinkable, as it seemed like the show would actually kill Meredith Grey, the person the entire series is named after. While Meredith has left the show as a full-time cast member now, at the time, she was the definitive protagonist. Of course, as a hospital drama series, Grey's Anatomy had to put everyone's lives in danger at some point, and this was the episode where it happened to Meredith herself, with the whole storyline proving quite emotional.

A panicked man accidentally knocks Meredith into freezing water, and no one sees it but a young girl who can't speak. Nobody knows where Meredith is, and Derek realizes that she might be out there somewhere, and he finds her. The scene of him walking out of the water, holding her in his arms with her skin blue and her not breathing, is a moment most Grey's fans will never forget. This episode ends with Meredith at death's door, and it takes a week to learn her fate, but seeing Derek and Cristina respond to this is highly emotional.

17 "It's The End Of The World" & "As We Know It"

Season 2, Episodes 16-17

Meredith Grey has had more than one near-death experience. While her scariest moment came when she had COVID-19 many years later, she also almost died in season 2 when she came across a man with a bomb inside his body. Things get especially intense when the paramedic (Christina Ricci) who is working hard to keep the bomb in place with her hand has to pull her hand out, and Meredith puts hers in and takes over.

Kyle Chandler also appears in the episode as Dylan, a member of the bomb squad there to help Meredith. Meredith and Dylan bond as they work to get the bomb out of the man's chest so he can save Meredith's life. However, what really throws things off is after Dylan gets the bomb out of the body. As Meredith watches her hero walk away, suddenly, the bomb explodes and kills Dylan. It was shocking and a terrifying moment.

16 "The Sound Of Silence"

Season 12, Episode 9

In season 12, Meredith Grey experiences terrible trauma when she is working on a patient who suffered a seizure. The man starts to violently lash out in aggression and attacks Meredith. This leads to the team rescuing her, but she ends up injured quite badly, as she loses the ability to speak and most of the episode (directed masterfully by Denzel Washington) shows things from Meredith's point of view.

Meredith is in a cast, her jaw wired shut, and her kids refuse to come see her, leaving her feeling alone and abandoned. However, she can't speak to anyone and can only hold her thoughts in her head. Since the episode shows Meredith's point of view, it puts the viewers in her position, and it is almost suffocating to see her pain and suffering. When she suffers a panic attack, things get worse, and the rest of the episode shows her vulnerability. It is something that played out later in the COVID-19 episodes, but here it is just as powerful.

15 "Didn't We Almost Have It All?"

Season 3, Episode 25

Among all the doctors on Grey’s Anatomy, Cristina was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant surgeons ever featured. Fans also may recall that she was incredibly competitive from day one, eager to scrub in on surgeries and gain as much experience in the OR as possible. Her drive and cutthroat approach to the job eventually caught the attention of a more experienced surgeon, Preston Burke (Isaiah Washington).

As time went by, Cristina and Preston started dating each other and, at one point, they even got engaged. However, in this episode, Preston decides to call off the wedding as Washington exited the show. While fans weren't exactly disappointed to see Preston go, they were heartbroken for Cristina, who had been humiliated in front of their family and friends. She had deserved so much more than this terrible treatment. Her heart-wrenching request for help getting out of her wedding dress is one the audience will never forget.

Related

Grey's Anatomy: Why Isaiah Washington's Burke Left In Season 3

Isaiah Washington’s departure from Grey’s Anatomy season 3 saw Preston Burke leave Sandra Oh’s Cristina Yang at the alter after an on-set incident.

Posts

14 "One Day Like This"

Season 14, Episode 17

Season 14 was a pivotal one for April in of her character arc, as fans saw her go through a crisis of faith. While it was a storyline that went on for several weeks, the writers did manage to find a way to reconcile her faith in one of the saddest Grey's Anatomy episodes, "One Day Like This," through Eli (a rabbi who had been itted to the hospital with toxic epidermal necrolysis).

Eli might have only been a minor character, but his words of wisdom and brief interaction with April touched the hearts of many fans. This was not only because the viewers could feel the intensity and ion Sarah Drew and Saul Hersh Rubinek put behind the words, but also because the scene contained one of the saddest patient deaths Grey's Anatomy fans had ever seen as Eli, unfortunately, ed away not long after, believing April to be his wife when he did.

13 "Things We Said Today"

Season 9, Episode 10

In this episode, it was discovered that Adele Webber needed surgery due to an undiagnosed abdominal aortic aneurysm. Determined to save her, Bailey made the decision to delay her own wedding ceremony, so she could personally operate on Richard’s wife. Unfortunately, Adele suffered a heart attack, and Richard only informed Meredith about Adele’s ing during Bailey’s wedding ceremony.

The sorrow on his face was enough to make anyone weep, especially since he had a flashback to his and Adele's own wedding. This is something that Grey's Anatomy does many times, by taking a happy moment and then adding in the tragedy to weigh it down. What should have been a joyous time for everyone was now cathartic and mournful at the same time. What was particularly heartbreaking about "Things We Said Today" is that it was the final episode that Loretta Devine appeared in.

12 "Helplessly Hoping"

Season 17, Episode 7

Season 17 was one of the show's most heartbreaking as it involved a lot of death and serious storylines. However, no one ever expected that they would lose another fan-favorite character, who was on his way to becoming one of the most promising surgeons. After months of investigating a human trafficking case, Andrew DeLuca was sadly murdered in "Helplessly Hoping" while trying to bring the criminals to justice.

In the Station 19 crossover, he stopped the child trafficker but sadly died doing so. While it was a well-written story and all the actors involved, particularly Giacomo Gianniotti and Stefania Spampinato, delivered powerful performances, it was nevertheless heartbreaking that DeLuca's character journey ended on such a tragic note in one of the saddest Grey's Anatomy episodes. What made this really tragic was that few people believed Andrew's claims before this, thanks to his bipolar disorder diagnosis.

11 "Suddenly"

Season 8, Episode 10

There have been plenty of iconic romances on Grey's Anatomy that had a profound effect on fans, but one of the most underrated was Henry and Teddy's. Henry came to the hospital in need of surgery, but he didn't have the money. Teddy married him so he could be on her insurance. It may have started as a marriage of convenience, but the couple genuinely fell in love as Teddy ed Henry with his operations and condition.

The operation was successful, and the two looked like they were building a life together. Sadly, this didn't last for very long as Henry sadly died after discovering a tumor near his heart in the episode "Suddenly." Not only were the fans devastated by the outcome, but several characters' relationships, including Cristina and Owen's, were affected in the long run, too, since Teddy felt Owen put the hospital before her husband by not telling her he died until after she finished an surgery. It was a heartbreaking moment.