7 Predictions For Season 16 of Grey's Anatomy

Jackson (Jesse Williams) and Maggie (Kelly McCreary) have been together for several seasons now, but despite their longevity, things have never felt completely solid between them. Season 15 started with Maggie feeling insecure about where she stood with her boyfriend while he dealt with the abrupt departure of his ex-wife, April (Sarah Drew) and ended with the couple on a disastrous camping trip where Jackson seemed determined to convince Maggie that she liked activities that she, in fact, did not, and Maggie admitted that she wasn't even sure Jackson liked her. Add to that the chunk of the season in which Jackson simply up and vanished for a few episodes, telling Maggie in a text message that he was taking some time off to sort through his issues alone, and it's easy to understand where Maggie is coming from.

Maggie has admitted before that she has a lot of problems when it comes to relationships and has often wondered if there's something wrong with her since she can't seem to make anything work long-term. But what's happening with Jackson and Maggie isn't her fault, and at the end of season 15, it seemed like she'd figured that out. Either Jackson needs to love her for who she is — without any more attempts to change her — or she'll be out the door. If she does wind up ending things with Jackson, we expect season 16 to introduce a new love interest for Maggie who looks at her like the sun shines out of her scalpel, because it's about time she realizes that she's pretty dreamy herself.

Over the years, Grey's Anatomy has evolved from being a show mostly about Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) to a show mostly about the hospital where Meredith works. Meredith herself has certainly gone through the emotional wringer more times than seems healthy, but she's not the main focus of the show anymore and hasn't been for a long time. This was especially true in season 15, which gave other characters meaty, compelling storylines, but largely relegated Meredith to her love life, tossing her into a forced love triangle before ultimately pairing her off with charming-but-boring resident Andrew DeLuca (Giacomo Gianniotti).

However, the end of season 15 has Meredith poised to take center stage of her own show again, after she wrote her daughter's name on an uninsured patient's medical forms and subsequently got herself fired, along with Alex (Justin Chambers) and Richard (James Pickens Jr.) Although Andrew was ready to take the fall for her, Meredith ended the season prepared to fight her own battles and turned herself in to the police. With Meredith beginning season 16 unemployed and possibly incarcerated, it seems as though this upcoming season will finally give her a meaty arc that she can really sink her teeth into, and which has nothing to do with the person she's dating.

While Amelia Shepherd (Caterina Scorsone) is open about the fact that she's a recovering drug addict, she's managed to stay mostly sober, with only one brief relapse, since joining the cast of Grey's Anatomy. Since she's managed to hold onto her sobriety through the loss of her brother, the dissolution of her marriage, a brain tumor, and most recently, the loss of her foster daughter, it may be tempting to assume that nothing could shake her off the wagon at this point.

However, anyone who watched Amelia's arc on the Grey's spinoff Private Practice knows just how easy it is for Amelia to slip back into her old, destructive habits and how difficult it is for her to resist the temptation to resort to pills and booze to numb the pain when life gets hard. Between the loss of Betty (Peyton Kennedy), the knowledge that Owen (Kevin McKidd) chose Teddy (Kim Raver) over Amelia, and the responsibility of possibly having to care for Meredith's three kids while her sister-in-law goes to jail, Amelia will be dealing with a lot of anxiety and pressure in season 16. And while of course we want to hope that the youngest Shepherd sister will continue to stand firm, planting her feet holding her superhero pose no matter what life throws at her, we wouldn't be surprised if season 16 had a wave big enough to finally knock her down.

Believe it or not, given Grey's Anatomy's reputation for gleefully killing off characters left and right, the show hasn't suffered a major death since killing off Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) at the end of season 11. While other main characters have come close to meeting an early demise — like when Stephanie Edwards (Jerrika Hinton) had to run through a fire in season 13, or when April barely survived a catastrophic car accident in season 14 — they've always managed to pull through. Some longtime cast members have left the show, but it's always been of the characters' own free will (if not always the actors').

Prior to season 11, Grey's never went more than two seasons (and rarely even that long) without killing either a main cast member or a long-running guest star; yet, we've now had four entire seasons without a single devastating loss. That makes us feel like at least one major character is living on borrowed time, and possibly even more than one. Perhaps Grey's has simply been biding its time, lulling us into complacency, so that when the fatal blows finally do start falling, we'll be unprepared, and the losses will utterly destroy us.

Although showrunner Krista Vernoff has said that she's "trying to get someone back" for season 16, we don't know yet who she was talking about, or if their return is a done deal. However, 16 seasons in, Grey's Anatomy has no shortage of former cast members to choose from, and even if the actor Vernoff was talking about falls through, we still suspect that at least one familiar face will show up this season. The past few seasons have often leaned into nostalgia for the early seasons of the show, and season 15 even found a way to work in brief appearances from long-dead characters like George O'Malley (T.R. Knight), Mark Sloan (Eric Dane), Lexie Grey (Chyler Leigh), and Derek Shepherd.

Given the creative ways Grey's has been known to bring people back, Vernoff could just as easily be referring to a character who departed Grey-Sloan Memorial on their own terms, or to a deceased character who left in a body bag. We've got our theories about who it might be, but nothing is really off the table at this point. The only thing we know for sure is that we're excited to see who Grey's manages to pull back into the fold this time.

Season 15 may have had a severe windstorm, but that was practically nothing compared to the cataclysmic disasters of previous seasons. Over the years, the doctors of Grey's Anatomy have survived bombs, plane crashes, and mass shootings — but those events were never without casualties. After the relatively tame events of the past few seasons, where even the biggest storm, crashes, and natural disasters didn't have any major lasting effects on the core group at Grey-Sloan, it seems like it may be time for Grey's to shake things up — possibly literally.

Although Seattle did experience an earthquake back in season 11, it was pretty minor, so it feels like that's a natural disaster Grey's could revisit without feeling stale. Other options the show hasn't made its characters deal with yet include a tornado, a flood, or a wildfire — which may be what leads to one of the crossovers with spinoff series Station 19 that ABC entertainment president Karey Burke revealed would occur during season 16.

Although Grey's Anatomy and Station 19 will not be crossing over with one another every week, as was initially stated by Karey Burke, there will be "three or four [crossovers] peppered throughout the season." However, even though the two shows will each still stand alone most of the time, Grey's and Station 19 will feel "more blended" under the guidance of Krista Vernoff, who is adding showrunner duties for Station 19 to her plate after helming Grey's for years.

It sounds as though one way Vernoff will be bringing these two shows together will be through a crossover romance between a Grey's character and a Station 19 character. Although neither Vernoff nor Burke has mentioned which two characters will become smitten with one another, we can take an educated guess. Firefighter Dean from Station 19 has had heart-eyes for Grey-Sloan's Maggie Pierce since the first time they met, and even worked up the courage to ask her out once during season 15, although Maggie turned him down at the time, since she was with Jackson. However, if things wind up fizzling out between Maggie and Jackson, perhaps Dean will be just the guy she needs to help her work through her heartbreak.