ABC Boss Hopes For Season 18 Of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Reveals Number Of ‘Station 19’ Crossovers

ABC’s medical drama Grey’s Anatomy made more history last spring with a two-year renewal for Seasons 16 and 17. The series’ star, Ellen Pompeo, is signed for both seasons — the current 16th and the next 17th. Will the 2020-21 season — presently the last in Pompeo’s contract — be Grey’s last?

“I hope not,” ABC Entertainment President Karey Burke said during TCA. “Grey’s Anatomy will live as long as Ellen is interested in playing Meredith Grey.”

The network has not started conversations with Pompeo yet about doing additional seasons.

“We will let her lead the pace on that,” Burke told Deadline.

Soon moving to 9 PM, Grey’s Anatomy, the longest running medical drama on television, will be preceded on Thursdays by the third season of spinoff Station 19, with Grey’s executive producer/showrunner Krista Vernoff now in charge of both series, creating opportunities for seamless narrative.

Station 19 will kick off its third season with a two-hour Station 19-Grey’s crossover. It will be one of four such crossover events through the season, Burke said today.

In an interview with Deadline in November, Vernoff said that the two shows will interconnect “every few episodes.” “We don’t want to do it every week, we don’t want to create a mold, we don’t want to fall into any kind of pattern, we don’t want people to ever know what to expect,” she said. “We have found many different, really quite exciting and fun ways to interact between the two shows.”

ABC Day @ TCA: Deadline’s Complete Coverage

Today, Vernoff was complimented by Burke about the way she has done that.

“You will start to see relationships emerge between characters that exist in the Station world and the Grey’s world in really organic ways,” Burke said. “I am incredibly impressed by what Krista and her team have done to make those worlds feel very seamless in an organic way, not feel forced. And then we will have throughout the Season 4 tentpole events that revolve around big emergencies that would naturally start with first responders (on Station 19) and end up in the hospital (on Grey’s) and will take the storytelling to a two-hour block.”