Exclusive

The Grey's Anatomy Eulogy You've Been Waiting For! Shonda Rhimes Remembers Killing Off McDreamy

Executive producer Shonda Rhimes explains why Patrick Dempsey had to be killed off

By Sydney Bucksbaum Aug 13, 2015 5:00 PMTags

Please join us in a moment of silence for our dearly departed friend, crush and hero: Derek "McDreamy" Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey). 

It's been almost three months since the hottest doc at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital was ripped from our lives in one of the most gut wrenching, heartbreaking, rough episodes of Grey's Anatomy we have ever seen. But we still are not over it. (We're pretty sure we'll never be over it. Ever.)

Thankfully, E! News has an exclusive first look at a bonus scene off the Grey's Anatomy season 11 DVD, with showrunner Shonda Rhimes finally giving us the eulogy we've been waiting for.

Press play on the exclusive video above now...and get ready to cry all of the tears.  

ABC

When E! News caught up with Rhimes last week at the 2015 Summer TCA press tour, she revealed that she never had an exit plan in mind for Dempsey or any other actor on the show, but she was proud with how it turned out.

"The decision to have the character die the way that he did was not a difficult one in the sense of what were the options?" Rhimes said. "Either Derek was going to walk out on Meredith [Ellen Pompeo], and leave her high and dry, and what was that going to mean? That was going to suggest that the love was not true, the thing we had said for 11 years was a lie and McDreamy wasn't McDreamy. For me, that was untenable."

And no, there won't be a new love interest for Meredith...at least, not for a while.

"I have not planned to [introduce a new love interest for her] and that's not really the focus of what we're doing with her right now," Rhimes said. "Meredith is in a rebirth and she's evolving. I'm watching the character do what the character's doing and I'll see where it goes."

Grey's Anatomy returns this fall on ABC.