Station 19 season 3 will have frequent Grey’s Anatomy crossovers
Speaking via Deadline at ABC’s upfront presentation this past week, network programming head Karey Burke indicated that “people can expect crossover [events] between these series every week,” with the goal being to create more of a shared universe where there are more seamless storylines between one show and the next. We know that there are elements of this that we’ve seen in the One Chicago storylines, at least where you see characters from one show briefly turn up on the other shows every single week. Yet, this seems to be a little bit more ambitious … not that we’re altogether sure that this is a great idea.
As a matter of fact, we’re actually a little bit more confident that this move is a bad idea. We do like both series, but if you lean too hard on the crossovers, you make it impossible for viewers to enjoy them fully unless you watch both shows — and as the ratings for Station 19 indicate, there are a lot of Grey’s Anatomy fans who don’t currently also watch it. While we enjoy the firefighter spin-off, nobody should feel like they have to watch it every week to get the scope of a full story. Also, this move could cause problems for viewers watching in other parts of the world (not every network has Station 19 airing directly after the flagship show), or for viewers who are binge-watching in the future on Netflix.
For some more news when it comes to Station 19 in video form, we’ve got our review for the finale below and we strongly suggest checking that one! Meanwhile, you can also subscribe to CarterMatt on YouTube for more insight.
Our real interpretation
While ABC probably wanted to make a big promotion out of this idea of a shared universe, we think that there’s probably a lot of hyperbole working its way in there. We could see crossovers every week that don’t actually impact the main storyline of either show, and this is probably more likely. Maybe a paramedic takes someone to the Grey Sloan one week and that’s the extent of it. Obviously, it would benefit Station 19 tremendously to have as much connectivity as possible, but it’s hard from a writing point of view to constantly find big reasons to pair the shows together — and we say that even knowing that Krista Vernoff is going to be running both shows moving into the next TV season.
Grey’s Anatomy will be back this fall, and if you do want to see some other news about it now, head over to the link here to get some more news when it comes to Grey’s Anatomy and resolving the big cliffhanger that is out there for it in relation to Jackson.
Do you want to see more of Grey’s Anatomy and Station 19 together over the course of the next year? Be sure to share right now in the comments. (Photo: ABC.)