Again, warning…spoiler be ahead.

Well that was a Grey’s Anatomy finale. By that I mean, something horrible and upsetting, with death and misery for all. Seriously can these people never catch a break?

Even Christina Yang has realized how ridiculous it’s gotten – with the bombs and the car crashes and the shooters… it’s almost as if they are on a TV show and there is the constant need for drama, or something.

But let’s get down to the nitty gritty. What everyone really wants to know is – who died. We’ve been teased for weeks that someone big was going to die. Not Arizona’s childhood friend who let his cancer get away from him before he sought treatment. Not any of the other side characters who come and go every week. But someone who is a real member of the cast.

And lo, they were right. While it wasn’t one of the big three (Yang, Meredith, or Derek), it was a Grey – Lexie.

Sloan, with a dying Lexie

The plane taking the Seattle Grace/Mercy West surgical team to Boise to perform the separation of yet another set of conjoined twins, went down in some wooded area. The damage was severe most of the crew was severely injured. Most of all, poor Lexie. She had just poured out her heart to Mark Sloan and now she’s crushed by a engine. The whole scene was too sad, Lexie under both the engine and no delusions about her ability to make it out of this alive, Mark refusing to hold her hand because she wan’t going to die.

I kept wishing Meredith would make it over in time to say goodbye to her sister, but no. Lexie’s dying wish that Mark tell Meredith that she was a good sister, was too heartbreaking for me. Their relationship had been so strained for so long, for it to come down to this…

Yang, still in charge and fighting to live after the crash

As for the rest of the survivors: after screaming for a full six minutes, Arizona finally shut up and saw that her femur was both crushed and sticking out of her leg, and she started coughing up blood; Christina had not only lost her shoe, but had dislocated her shoulder, and Mark obligingly popped it back in; Meredith awoken to find a huge shard of metal in her leg, which she promptly removed and tourniqueted her thigh; Derek had to smash his hand with a rock (so…no more surgeon?) to break himself free from the wreckage; and poor Mark, losing Lexie and then having to have his pericardium drained using a plastic straw. Not sure which of them will last the night.

Pompeo – not afraid to be a really ugly crier

I’m not convinced that Lexie will be the last one dead from this disaster. It wouldn’t shock me if Mark or Derek also died. Sad, but not shocking.

A nice little technique the episode employed was mirroring the events at Seattle Grace with the crash – the sterile and clean and orderly procedures at the hospital and the messy, haphazard, desperate procedures in the woods. It was well done, something Grey’s hasn’t always accomplished.

So what about the cast at the hospital? Karev accepted the insane job offer at Hopkins (which is why he wasn’t on the plane, Arizona threw him off and went in his place), April was lost, with all her job offers vanishing after she failed her boards; Avery was ashamed to be accepting a job at Tulane after deflowering April and leaving her; Bailey and whatshisface are getting married (eh); Callie is horny for Arizona (what’s new); and Chief is way too excited to take the residents out for their big residents dinner.

The biggest news from the hospital side of the episode was Owen finding out that Teddy had been offered a great job with the US Army but turned it down so that she wouldn’t leave the hospital where her husband died…or Owen. To get her to finally move on with her life, Owen fires her. And they hug and cry, yada yada yada. It was sort of touching in its own way.

Engine that killed Lexie

The finale ended on a quiet note. With their signal dead, no more matches, no food, probably no water, the crash survivors are awaiting their rescue which doesn’t look to be happening any time soon. Meredith and Christina, sitting in the night, contemplating their bleak and unknowable future.

It’s a dark, dark ending for a show that is known for its dark dark season finales.