Warning! SPOILERS about Grey’s Anatomy season 21, episode 18 ahead.
Meredith’s feud in Grey's Anatomy season 21 can finally be solved by Ellen Pompeo’s bigger role in the medical drama’s season 22. Since moving to Boston in Grey’s Anatomy season 19, Meredith’s biggest focus has been studying Alzheimer’s. While the move coincided with studying it under the aegis of the Fox Foundation, granting Meredith first and Amelia later the means and a place to do so, it also meant Meredith wasn’t free to choose the direction of her own research, as Catherine wanted her not to deviate from the scientific consensus. This exacerbated their fight in Grey’s Anatomy season 21.
Meredith and Amelia publishing their findings in season 20’s finale enraged Catherine, but she eventually had to come to an agreement with Meredith after collapsing in Meredith’s presence in season 21’s premiere. This granted Meredith the freedom she wanted with her Alzheimer’s study, but it also didn’t let Meredith and Catherine make peace, as they could just ignore one another. Their arrangement even caused Meredith to fall out with Richard in Grey’s Anatomy season 21, making Catherine and Meredith’s feud something that would be better to overcome. Grey’s Anatomy season 21’s ending hinted at how that might happen at last.
Grey's Anatomy Season 21 Finale Sets Up Meredith's Bigger Role In Season 22
Meredith Is Set To Split Her Time Between Boston & Seattle
Grey’s Anatomy season 21’s finale saw Meredith arrive at Grey Sloan Memorial with the intention to sell her shares, which she had had since buying them together with the Seattle Grace Five with the settlement money following season 8’s plane crash. Separating herself from those shares proved how dedicated Meredith was to see through her Alzheimer’s study, as she was willing to sever her last direct connection to Grey Sloan. However, the events of Grey’s Anatomy season 21’s ending inevitably influenced Meredith, reminding her of all the family she had in Seattle, whom she couldn’t share life with in Boston.
The epiphany led Meredith to change her plan to sell the shares to Catherine and the Fox Foundation. While she was still willing to sell them, Meredith also wanted the assurance that she could return as a general surgeon to Grey Sloan, to operate and not to be chief, as her research kept Meredith as far from the OR as possible. Meredith’s bigger role in Grey’s Anatomy season 22 also secured another seemingly inconspicuous win in Catherine’s acceptance to let Meredith and Amelia use her labs for their research, which could push Meredith and Catherine to make peace more likely.
Meredith & Catherine's Feud Ending Can Result In Jackson's Return
Jackson Expressed His Wish To Support Meredith's Study In Grey's Anatomy Season 21's Premiere
Meredith using Catherine’s labs signals a possible reconciliation in Grey’s Anatomy season 22, even if Catherine’s behavior in Meredith’s presence has continued to be curt. Indeed, such a development would put Meredith and Catherine back in each other’s lives, a small success given how long they had previously ignored one another. Catherine agreeing to Meredith’s plan also makes tackling another storyline possible. Indeed, when the Fox Foundation kept sending injunctions Meredith’s way and cease and desist letters to anyone wanting to fund her research in Grey’s Anatomy season 21’s premiere, Jackson admitted to wanting Meredith to stay with the foundation.
Jackson’s words convinced Meredith to apologize to Catherine, which led to Meredith finding her collapsing, thus making the separation from the Fox Foundation in exchange for Meredith treating Catherine and telling nobody possible. Despite directly affecting the state of things between the women in Grey’s Anatomy season 21’s finale, Jackson’s wish to be part of the study to find the cure for Alzheimer’s wasn’t addressed. Meredith making agreements directly with Catherine cut him out, when it was Jackson who brought Meredith to the foundation, who made arrangements to include Amelia and Nick, wanting to be part of the Alzheimer’s research.
Grey's Anatomy Season 22 Can Significantly Advance Meredith's Alzheimer Study
Meredith & Catherine Mending Fences Would Greatly Work In That Direction
Meredith’s journey in Grey’s Anatomy season 21 aptly brought her to realize how the odds were stacked against her, as everyone supported Koracick’s perspective of excluding female mice from his research, even if that would have made his findings applicable only to part of the population. After the problems with the Fox Foundation and finding institutions to fund the study, Meredith choosing to put her research ahead of the politics of doing research and fund it herself turned the tables, letting her be exactly where she needed to be and proving Ellis’s worst criticism wrong in Grey’s Anatomy season 21.
With Meredith’s ultimate goal being to cure Alzheimer’s, Meredith will need a powerful institution to back her. Joining again the Fox Foundation after trying to advance her research her way would give Meredith and Catherine, two trailblazing surgeons, the chance to be the ones behind such a discovery, while also letting Jackson back in to the study, which is what he wished for from the beginning. Such a development would be entirely fitting for the medical drama’s themes, and it seems Grey’s Anatomy season 22 could go in that direction after Catherine and Meredith’s animosity thawed in season 21’s ending.
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