‘Grey’s Anatomy’ season 11: Is Patrick Dempsey leaving?

All week long, there have been some occasionally-nasty tabloid stories out there regarding Patrick Dempsey and the future of the Derek character on “Grey’s Anatomy.” Is he in fact leaving the show? We now have an answer inside, but MAJOR SPOILERS area ahead.

While we still believe many of the nasty stories to be false, it has now be more or less confirmed that Dempsey is in fact leaving the show after tonight’s episode entitled “How to Save a Life.” This news came out via Entertainment Weekly, but not intentionally. Copies of the magazine’s latest issue arrived to some subscribers a day early Thursday. These magazines included a lengthy story about the end of Patrick’s time on a show. The magazine has already released a statement regarding the leak (per Variety):

“We are surprised that an EW subscriber may have received their issue a day earlier than planned. We always try our best to bring readers exclusive news first. We would like to apologize to fans of the show that learned the news ahead of time.”

This is a similar error in some ways to what happened with “Sons of Anarchy” during its final season, where copies of a book meant for after the series finale revealed that Jax Teller (Charlie Hunnam) died in the show’s final episode. These sort of things unfortunately do happen.

The one thing that we hope for above all else is that the show manages to find a way to really tribute Patrick’s time on the show, and find a way to make Derek matter. After all, he has been one of the most popular characters on any drama series ever.

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