It turns out that Meredith Grey isn't the only one struggling to figure out her complicated love life. Showrunner Krista Vernoff recently revealed that Grey's Anatomy Season 17 will focus on Meredith's love triangle between Andrew DeLuca and Cormac ‘McWidow’ Hayes, in part because, much like her leading lady, Vernoff is having a difficult time figuring out which direction she wants Meredith to go in. Even she's not sure who is a better fit for Meredith.
“I’m at the point with that story where I don’t know who I am rooting for,” Vernoff teased in an interview with TV Line. “I don’t know if I think that DeLuca is rising to a level of dark and twisty and life experience that makes him somehow a [suitably] mature partner for Meredith," she continued. "Or if all that Hayes has been through in his life already makes him her equal. I am delighted to have such a conundrum.”
The last we saw of these characters during the makeshift Grey's Anatomy Season 16 finale, Meredith was taking a very stressed DeLuca home after they both worked so hard to save Richard's life. That doesn't necessarily indicate that the two of them are back together, though it proves that he's still very much a part of Meredith's life — and heart. So the only question is, where does this leave Hayes?
Vernoff believes the only reason she's been backed into this creative corner is due to how beautifully Giacomo Gianniotti and Richard Flood — the actors portraying DeLuca and Hayes — have handled their characters throughout the past season, bringing a level of complexity to the roles she hadn't predicted. “I thought that both Giacomo and Richard rose so beautifully to the occasion of the storytelling,” she explained during the same interview. “You write a script and you think it’s one thing and then you see it shot and put it together and it becomes something entirely different… I honestly don’t know how it will end.”
Hayes was initially introduced as a present for Meredith from her BFF Cristina Yang, who dubbed him with the nickname of "McWidow," given that he had lost his wife early in life, much like Meredith had lost Derek. Clearly Cristina thought the two of them would be a great match for each other and she's rarely wrong about, well, anything. However, she may not have realized the extent to which Mer has fallen for DeLuca. So is it too late to give her heart to anyone else? That's something Season 17 is sure to explore when the series returns this fall.
