The Station 19 Bosses Break Down the Bittersweet Series Finale

[Warning: This story contains spoilers for the series finale of Station 19 — Season 7, Episode 10, “One Last Time.” Read at your own risk!]

After seven seasons and 105 episodes, Station 19, the second Grey’s Anatomy spinoff, has put out its last fire on ABC, bidding an emotional farewell while giving fans a glimpse of the characters’ futures.

The series finale, titled “One Last Time,” picks up in the immediate aftermath of the penultimate episode, in which the fates of Maya Bishop (Danielle Savre) and Theo Ruiz (Carlos Miranda) hung in the balance as firefighters attempted to stop a massive wildfire from wiping out the city of Seattle. While Maya and Theo are both able to make it out alive — Maya is able to escape from a closing circle of fire thanks to a well-timed helicopter bucket, and Theo is rushed in time to the hospital to undergo a successful surgery — the members of Station 19 encounter a terrifying fire tornado.

As they come face-to-face with their own mortality for the umpteenth time, the main characters are all confronted with a vision of their respective futures. Maya and her wife, Dr. Carina DeLuca, (Stefania Spampinato) will finally be able to start and expand their family. Theo will be married with a child. Travis Montgomery (Jay Hayden) will divide his time between the two loves of his life: his best friend Vic Hughes (Barrett Doss) and new beau Dominic Amaya (Johnny Sibilly). Vic will honor the vision of her late best friend, Dean Miller (Okieriete Onaodowan), by expanding Crisis One, the program he founded to teach firefighters to de-escalate mental health calls without police intervention. Chief Natasha Ross (Merle Dandridge) and Robert Sullivan (Boris Kodjoe) will finally get married, surrounded by the members of 19. Dr. Ben Warren (Jason Winston George) will depart his post at Station 19 to complete his surgical residency, and he and his wife, Dr. Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson), will watch their three children graduate. Even Sean Beckett (Josh Randall) will finally find love again. 

“I really wanted to do these flash-forwards and see where they were going to be in the future, but how we were going to do it became really based in [what happened on] the show,” explained showrunner Zoanne Clack, who penned the bittersweet finale. (Her co-showrunner, Peter Paige, directed the final hour.) “Since firefighters are always in life-threatening situations, we were like, ‘What are you thinking when you’re in those fire shelters, when you’re surrounded by fire, or there’s a fire tornado that comes at you? What are you living for? How are you pushing through it?'”

Those vignettes of what will happen in the future are enough to keep the firefighters of Station 19 sane and alive — but the final episode is not without its surprises. While the members of her squad take shelter from the fire tornado, Capt. Andy Herrera (Jaina Lee Ortiz) secretly slips away to find a way to get the attention of another fire station, whose truck and hoses they use to stop the fire from spreading any further. But once her team has managed to contain the fire, Andy collapses from a combination of serious burns, smoke inhalation, and severe dehydration.

Thankfully, after getting her burns debrided and undergoing “a lot of pulmonary treatments” in the O.R., Andy is able to wake up with her entire team by her side — including Jack Gibson (Grey Damon), her former flame whose serious head injury at the end of last season meant he could no longer work as a firefighter. As viewers come to find out, in a major callback to the pilot, Jack is revealed to be Andy’s personal endgame.

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For good measure, Station 19 offered one last flash-forward to decades down the road: Andy will become the new chief of the Seattle Fire Department, and Maya will regain her captaincy of Station 19. In the final scene of the series, Andy is seen giving a speech to the next generation of 19 — which includes Pru, Dean’s daughter who was adopted by Ben and Bailey — before walking by a picture of her late firefighter father, Pruitt (Miguel Sandoval), on her way out of the station.

Ahead of the airing of the series finale, Clack and Paige sat down with TV Guide to break down all of the major reveals from the episode.

You were both given the enviable task — or maybe unenviable, depending on how you want to look at it — of having to “land the plane,” as you have both put it, after seven seasons of character growth and evolution. How did you approach the writing and directing of this finale?

Zoanne Clack: We had already planned out our season and what we were going to do in Season 8, and then we got canceled, so we had to restructure what we were thinking and how we were thinking about it. We always were going to do the wildfire at the end [of Season 7], but obviously, we couldn’t have a bunch of cliffhangers at the very end, so it was about restructuring and finding out how we could tell these stories in a satisfying way that gave some closure, but also left it open to some speculation. 

Basically, I really wanted to do these flash-forwards and see where they were going to be in the future, but how we were going to do it became really based in [what happened on] the show. Since firefighters are always in life-threatening situations, we were like, “What are you thinking when you’re in those fire shelters, when you’re surrounded by fire, or there’s a fire tornado that comes at you? What are you living for? How are you pushing through it? What is your drive to get you to the next step? And thinking about your future, what could the possibilities be?” That provided the perfect setup for these flash-forwards in those moments, and we thought that really worked to bring the whole show full circle. We have a lot of Easter eggs in there, and we wanted to show how the past really affects the future and how their growth affects the future.

Peter Paige: We talked a lot thematically about what we wanted to leave the audience with, and I think that’s most reflected in Andy’s last speech and the last shot of the show. Yes, the show is ending, but the things that you loved about the show, the things that you value about the show, the values that the show espouses, you get to carry those forward in your life, in your community, in your relationships, in your friendships. [Station] 19 does not stop just because we’re not going to make any new episodes. 19 is an idea, a construct, and you get to carry it with you. 

How did you guys decide on the little vignettes, the little flash-forwards, for each of the characters?

Paige: Some came really easily. Some were very hard-won. Some of them were just like, “Oh yeah, of course,” like with Maya and Carina. So much of their journey has been about [starting their family], so let’s see them manifest it. But then you get to Vic, and it’s like, “Oh, what do we want to show? We don’t want to give away that Travis is going with her, so we have to find something else. So it’s probably something professional, but how do we make it feel special? How do we make it emotional? How do we give it that punch? Oh, [let’s bring back Vic’s best friend] Dean! Dean’s there.” That was, like, an 11th hour Hail Mary. We were like, “Hey, Oak. What’s up, man? You want to get on a plane?” [Laughs.]

Clack: He was so game.

Paige: He was so game!

Clack: One little cute factoid is that we started off with two flash-forwards for each character — one professional and one personal. But obviously, we had to pull that back for time and budget. So we had to really go through after the read-through and pull out the things that we really wanted to say about where they were going and [decide on] the thing that would be the most satisfying based on their character journeys, and what we wanted to see. So we had to really push through, and [those flash-forwards] were revised and differentiated, and a lot of it was a constant process. We all talked it out. We talked to the actors. We talked to people on the crew, on the producing team. It was all very put together, together. 

Paige: Collaboratively, yes. And the Andy one came together [at the] very, very last minute because the obvious Andy flash-forward is she becomes chief, right? But we knew we were doing that in real time, so we wanted to save that. We had very much made a specific choice at the beginning of the season that this was not a season about Andy’s romantic life. This was a season about her captaincy, and that was enough. It is enough for a woman to have a great career and great career goals and to be learning how to do a job — that is a worthy journey. But then, where do we pull from [for the flash-forward]? And then it was Jaina who said “Um, Jack?” And we said, “Jack?” And she said, “Jack.” And we said, “Jack? Jack!”

Clack: Some writers said, “Jack!” And some writers said, “Jack…?” [Laughs.]

Paige: And then we finally came up with this idea of her stepping into the pilot. The conversation where Zoanne and I were tossing that back and forth and shaping it and coming up with it together was one of the most creatively thrilling moments of my career. It was so exciting.

Clack: It was one of the most beautiful ways that we were able to pull the past forward.

I recently spoke with Jaina and Grey for a special original cast feature that looks back on the entire show, and I asked them separately, “Where do you see your character in five-to-10 years?” What’s funny is that Jaina and Grey both gave me different answers — Jaina doesn’t want kids personally, so she felt that Andy wouldn’t want kids either; Grey thinks Jack will one day adopt two kids from the foster system who remind him of his foster siblings. Do either of you have a vision of where these characters will go or do together in the future?

Paige: I don’t. [But] I love that, by the way. Those things are so rooted in who they are and what they brought to the roles for seven years. Jack’s history is that foster family, and one of the things we had to let go of as we were crafting the finale was Zoanne had really wanted to find out that he went back to school for social work and opened a group home or something, and he was really giving back to that community, and we just didn’t have the space for it [in the finale]. So I am okay with that [interpretation]. I could see the two of them five years down the road, when Andy’s no longer an active firefighter, starting to have different conversations, starting to say, “Well, is there room for a kid in our lives?” And she’s saying, “Oh, I think I’m ready now.” [On the show] Maya was never going to have kids. It was not on the table, and look at where she ended up. So I think it’s promising that they both have such a vision for these characters. They’ll find their way through it, because that’s what relationships are. 

Clack: Yeah, and I think the thing about Jack is, since he didn’t have a moment where he was faced with death and therefore flying us into a flash-forward, we really wanted him to be integrated into another flash-forward. So we played around with a lot of flash-forwards where it was something [to do] with a foster home or a group home that he had started, and it just didn’t land well. It didn’t feel right, it didn’t feel as deep, and it just wasn’t quite there. So when we landed on Jack and Andy [ending up together], we were like, “This is where it goes!” And it just felt right. So, unfortunately, we had to give up the foster thing, but that is always a part of Jack. It’s just not a story we got to tell in 10 episodes. 

Peter, you’ve previously talked about how the series finale of Station 19 is the most ambitious hour of television that you have ever directed — and now we know why. What exactly was the shooting schedule for the episode? How far in advance did you know about how you wanted the show to end for you guys to start banking some little moments here and there and start planning out those sequences?

Paige: Oh, I don’t know how to answer that question exactly. [Laughs.] We knew we were doing the wildfire pre-cancellation, and Zoanne and I had crafted a strategy that we were going to do “big bigs and small smalls.” [In addition to episodes with big set pieces, we wanted to do] some very intimate episodes with lots of emotional stakes, but less big crazy production demands, which are, by the way, in every way as hard or harder than the big ones. So, we knew we had saved up the budget for this big two-parter. We had strategized a lot. I got 11 days to shoot the finale — 10 is usually our maximum. Stefania [Spampinato directed] Episode 4 [of Season 7] in eight days. So it can vary pretty wildly. We shot everything fresh for the finale, except for the pilot footage. It wasn’t like we grabbed a shot here or grabbed a scene there. We weren’t able to do that. The scripts weren’t ready until it was time. [Laughs.] We were still rewriting days into the shoot. [When we wrote the] Vic flash-forward and the Andy flash-forward, we were already, I think, four or five days into shooting when those kind of came together.

Clack: We were out on Disney Ranch. 

Paige: Yeah. [Laughs.]

Clack: We were walking around, sitting in a tent, doing ideas —

Paige: With a snake wrangler, trying not to get bitten. 

What was the last scene you guys shot? Was it one of the group scenes in the hospital or in the firehouse?

Paige: The penultimate scene we shot was everybody under the table, was Vic going away, and then we wrapped everybody out except Andy. We had a good laugh, a good cry, and we hugged, and we sent [Jaina] off to hair and makeup to get aged up.

The last shot of the series, we shot last. And everybody stayed. The whole barn was basically full of cast, crew, writers, executives — everybody who had put their hearts and souls into this show — and we shot it a few times. I had to keep going, “I’ll tell you when we’re done! [Laughs.] Don’t celebrate every take because we have to get it right!” And we shot that, and it was so emotionally perfect. I think it just allowed all of us to be present, to laugh, to cry, to show up for each other, to witness each other, and to see that last moment — that beautiful shot of 19 coming into focus. It was a really special day — one I’ll never forget, for sure.

So much of this show has been about Andy stepping into her power as the captain of Station 19 — and then eventually as the chief of the Seattle Fire Department. How would you describe the evolution of that part of her professional journey? In what way does she decide to lead?

Clack: Well, this whole season was that journey. Like Peter said, we didn’t give her a love interest. Her love interest was basically her profession; her love interest was figuring out who she was as a leader. That was the journey that we were pushing forward, and it took her the first half of the season to make the mistakes and try to figure out who she was going to be. And then the second half of the season, she really stepped into her own, figured out that she was going to lead more in a community aspect instead of [with the mindset of] “I am the leader, you are the follower.” And when we get to the finale, it’s the culmination of all of that. When we got canceled, we started thinking about, what do we want the last moments to look like? What do we want them to be? And we knew that we wanted her to be chief, and we knew that we wanted Maya and her leading together. So we kind of worked backwards from there, knowing that was where we wanted to go. 

And now we have Pru as part of 19 in the future. Was that always the plan?

Clack: That was always the plan. [Laughs.]

Paige: Yeah. But how good was that actor who looked so like Pru? She’s the daughter of our key hair stylist this season. When we were talking about [how] we’re going to need an older Pru, my phone dinged, and it was a picture of her daughter, and I was like, “Oh my God!” [Laughs.]

After the news of the cancellation, you sat down with all the actors and asked them how they wanted to see their characters end the show. Were there any moments that the actors suggested or pitched to you to wrap up their characters’ arcs that you hadn’t initially considered in the writing of Season 7?

Clack: Jason said he really wanted [Ben] to give [Andy] kudos.

Paige: And Jaina had said, “I would like to honor the dad story, or something like that,” which we were already planning, but there were little nuggets. It was very important to Jay that Vic be Travis’s endgame.

Clack: And vice versa. 

Paige: Yes, and vice versa. Jay literally said, “Everything I’ve done on this show has been about hanging more and more on that hook [or on the Travis-Vic friendship]. To be honest, 90, 95% of it was already stuff we were talking about as fans and as the people who’ve carried these characters. But they gave us little nuggets, little gems along the way.

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Let’s talk about Travis and Vic, who have one of the best friendships on television. Why does Travis decide to accompany Vic to Washington? Why can’t he live without her?

Paige: I think it is wildly underrepresented in media how important platonic love is. It is the backbone of most of our lives. We reinforce, in Hollywood, this idea that if you aren’t married or if you don’t have your romantic partner, that somehow means you’re not experiencing great love — and that’s just not the case. I mean, frankly, [former Grey’s Anatomy and Station 19 showrunner] Krista Vernoff is my Vic. I’m Travis to Krista’s Vic. We’ve been best friends for 37 years now.

So it was really beautiful that when we ended this show, we’ve got Andy and Jack in this kind of conventional TV structure, right? They start [together and separate] at the beginning, and they come back together at the end. We’ve got this beautiful Black power couple [Sullivan and Ross] who find their softness, their joy, and their humor in each other. We’ve got this queer couple [Maya and Carina] who have overcome generations of damage in order to choose each other and build a family together. And then we’ve got the great platon-com [or platonic-comedy], right? We’ve got this incredible story of friendship, of building a life around the people who make you feel seen and safe and valued. That is every bit as important and powerful and legitimate as any of those other stories, and we gave [Travis and Vic] the great rom-com finish. That’s probably my favorite sequence in the finale.

For me, there is a kind of finality to the way the show ends, while offering a glimpse into the futures of these characters. Did you or anyone else at Shondaland have any conversations about continuing this show on another network or streamer? How realistic are the chances of the show getting picked up, now that the finale has aired?

Paige: There was one moment a couple months ago where there was a little glimmer of hope that then was extinguished, and it does feel like we’re done. It does feel like it’s done, as sad as that is for all of us. But it was important to us to know [ahead of time], so that we could show up for it culturally with everyone who had put their lives and hearts and souls into the show. But also creatively, we wanted to make sure what we were leaving the fans with, what we were leaving the universe with, was something that we would be proud of.

The cancellation of Station 19 has, unfortunately, raised larger concerns about the backsliding of diversity and inclusion efforts on television and within the industry at large. What do you hope the legacy of this show will be? And what do you hope the shows that come after Station 19 will be able to take away from the value of having diversity in their storytelling?

Clack: It’s such a travesty that such a diverse show has been let go. But we love being able to tell stories of underrepresented people and putting their voices, first and foremost, [and give] voice for the voiceless. And we love the idea of community, which we’ve pushed forward into the themes of this last episode, into the themes of the entire season. It was one of our most important directives for ourselves.

Paige: For me, this goes back to The Fosters [an ABC Family/Freeform show that Paige co-created with Bradley Bredeweg and that ran for five seasons and birthed the spinoff Good Trouble]. If you bake it into the building of a show, you never have to reach for it. It’s there, and it’s not hard to do. It requires some thought, and it requires some care and some concern, but you don’t have to sacrifice anything else in order to have more diverse storytelling. You just don’t. You have to include more people at the table. That’s it, and it’s powerful and beautiful. And in a lot of ways, it’s easier, frankly, because when you fill a writers’ room with people who have these beautifully disparate life experiences, you have so much more to draw on. They’ll go, “Oh, I had this experience where…” And you go, “Oh my God, that’s a fire [storyline]! We can turn that into a fire and tell those stories.” For all the bitching and moaning about it, it really is easy. It just requires the tiniest bit of consciousness to engage with it, and suddenly, boom, it unfolds. So that’s what I hope people take away — bake [diversity] into your shows. It can still be entertaining. It can still be silly. It can still be hilarious. It can still be soapy. It can still be heartbreaking. It can still be all the things, but bake it into your show. 

Clack: I would say that the baking in also comes from having diverse, authentic voices behind the scenes. If you’re going to tell these stories, make sure you have the representation on both sides, [so] that you’re not telling what you think their reality is — you’re actually getting authentic voices. That’s going to hit your viewers more, and that’s going to have them want to come back because they’re finally seeing themselves on television, which is just such a beautiful thing for those of us who haven’t been represented for so long. 

All episodes of Station 19 are now streaming on Hulu.