Patrick Dempsey confirms major Grey's Anatomy theory after surprise return to show

McDreamy returns!

Fans of the long-running medical drama Grey's Anatomy have been thrilled to see Patrick Dempsey's much-beloved character Derek return in the Season 17 premiere of the show, after having been killed off in 2015.

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Dempsey discussed the shock return on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and told the talk show host about how positive the reception has been.

"The impact, the response, has been incredibly overwhelming and very moving," Dempsey said. "It was nice to be able to have it work out this way."

The 54-year-old actor admitted that he had felt a special pull towards those suffering in the COVID-19 pandemic, having been a symbol for medical professionals in pop culture for such a long time.

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"There's so many souls that we have lost right now," he said of the nearly 1.5 million people who have died from COVID-19. "The thought of having angels around us is very comforting, certainly to me."

Derek's surprise on-screen appearance comes after the show's titular character, Ellen Pompeo's Meredith Grey, collapses while working to help combat COVID, and has a dream about Dempsey's character.

After a get-together with Pompeo over the summer, she and Dempsey brainstormed ways to encourage people to wear a mask, which culminated in Derek being re-introduced.

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"We hadn't spoken in quite some time, so we were playing catch-up and she goes, 'What do you think about coming back on to the show? Here's our idea of what we want to do for Season 17'," Dempsey recalled.

"I was like, 'What a great opportunity for people. How great it would be for the fans, really, to see everybody reunited in this sort of bizarre way'. And to the credit of the writers, Krista [Vernoff] came up with this great idea where I will come and visit her in her COVID dream."

And with this line, Dempsey confirmed for fans of the show that Meredith Grey will in fact be infected with the coronavirus throughout the new season, causing her lucid dreams and his character's return.

However, once the agreement was made, keeping the surprise return a secret became the number one focus, and Dempsey admitted that it was not an easy feat.

"Nobody knew about it other than some people at ABC, Krista, and then Ellen [Pompeo] and myself, and that was it," he confirmed.

"And then we started talking to the directors, which would be Debbie Allen, who's amazing, and Kevin McKidd, who's one of the directors that I worked with, that was it."

"No one knew until I showed up on set that day," Dempsey continued. "We were really concerned that somebody would take a picture and it would get out somehow, but we managed to keep it a secret, which was pretty phenomenal."

Seasons 1-14 of Grey's Anatomy are available to watch on Stan.

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