Shonda Rhimes has made a name for herself as the most astonishing showrunner in television.
Grey’s Anatomy is about to enter its fifteenth season. The longevity of Rhimes’ most successful show is due in large part to its surprising character demises, which allow new characters to add their stories to the series’ canon.
Scandal lived up to its name, as its leads regularly revealed horrible acts they had committed and secrets they had hidden from even their closest confidents, whether it was election rigging, covert operations, or secret affairs.
How To Get Away With Murder was filled with so many twists that it is nearly impossible to follow half of the time, and most interviews with the showrunner sound like he knows about as much about the answers to the series’ big questions as the viewer does.
Even Shondaland’s short-lived projects like The Catch, For The People, and Still Star-Crossed surprised viewers with their hidden love affairs and last-minute plot twists.
Not all of the biggest twists and turns in these series made it to air, however. Some were relegated to deleted scenes, while others were scrapped by the writers before filming even began.
These changes could have drastically altered the worlds in which Shondaland shows reside, some for the worse and other for the better.
Could Scandal’s low ratings in the final season been changed by just one plot twist? Would Grey’s Anatomy still be breaking records if just one key character had returned or new relationships had been formed?
Read on to learn the 12 Canceled Twists That Would’ve Hurt Shondaland (And 8 That Would’ve Saved It).
Hurt: Quinn Was the Lindberg Baby (Scandal)
Who is Quinn Perkins? That was the question that plagued fans during the summer of 2012 after Scandal’s first cliffhanger-filled finale.
While we know now that Quinn’s former life involved being unlucky enough to become collateral damage in an election-rigging plot, getting framed for an explosion that claimed the life of her ex-boyfriend, and waking up with a new identity provided to her by OPA, a writers’ roundtable revealed that even Shonda Rhimes didn’t know what Quinn’s identity would be when she wrote the season one finale.
The writers explored making Quinn the Lindberg baby, an abducted infant found deceased in 1932.
This would have been a dark revelation, even for Scandal, and a stretch, considering that the Lindberg baby was male.
They also briefly considered making her Russian, but decided against it when her “real” last name was inconveniently long.
Hurt: Derek Had A Teenage Daughter (Grey’s)
In the original pilot for Grey’s Anatomy, not only was Derek Shepherd married, but his secret past had the added baggage of a teenage daughter living in Seattle.
In addition to making Derek and Meredith’s one-night stand meet-cute even more messed up, this revelation would have completely changed the tone of the series moving forward for the worse.
Meredith was barely able to keep it together for her own sake for most of the series.
Adding in the potential of becoming the step-mother would have made it more difficult for our commitment-phobic heroine to choose Dr. McDreamy, and she was so irresponsible that she would’ve been a horrible role model for a teenage girl.
Meredith’s self-destructive tendencies are a part of her charm, but they wouldn’t have been quite as cute if they were negatively affecting the life of a teenager.
Saved: Wes Wasn’t deceased (HTGAWM)
It’s a risk to cut off your central character. Shows have done it before and succeeded — Game of Thrones being a notable example — and the star of HTGAWM is unarguably Viola Davis as Annalise Keating.
However, Wes was the viewer’s surrogate into her world and the moral compass of the show.
Showrunner Pete Nowalk changed his mind a million times when deciding who would be the body under the sheet in the middle of the third season.
It was the most surprising decision, which was entertaining at the time, but HTGAWM’s numbers have floundered since then.
The show seems to have lost its way, and Wes’s passing was the likely the catalyst.
Hurt: Meredith and Burke Were Going To Date (Grey’s)
It’s hard to imagine Grey’s Anatomy without its central couple, Meredith and Derek. Their names even rhyme, Mer and Der, like they were fated in the stars (or meticulously planned by the writers).
Instead, Meredith’s love interest was ultimately going to be Isaiah Washington, who played Dr. Preston Burke.
Because Ellen Pompeo is married to an African-American man, she didn’t want her love interest to also be a black man because it was too similar to her personal life.
This ended up being a lucky move for the series, as the chemistry between Pompeo and Patrick Dempsey was a major draw for viewers and Isaiah Washington eventually left the show for using a homophobic slur again T.R. Knight, who portrayed George O’Malley.
Hurt: If Fitz Never Knew About Olivia’s Abortion (Scandal)
Olivia Pope had an abortion because she did not want a child. A controversial and grounding element of Scandal’s episode centering around the defunding of Planned Parenthood, six months passed before Fitzgerald Grant learned that his then-girlfriend had aborted their unborn child.
Actually, those six months passed before Olivia’s pregnancy and abortion were even mentioned again onscreen, and many viewers wondered if Fitz would ever learn about Olivia’s choice.
In March of that year, Rhimes still hadn’t decided whether Fitz would learn about the abortion, asking if he really had to know because Olivia had made her own choice about her body.
When Fitz does learn about the abortion from a medical file, it allows for a powerful moment in the series where the leader implicitly reveals that he is pro-choice.
Through clever storytelling, the writers managed to include Fitz’s reaction without compromising their desire to show that Olivia had no obligation to tell Fitz about her decision.
Saved: If Justice Wasn’t Served In “The Lawn Chair" (Scandal)
Scandal received mixed reviews for its Michael Brown-inspired episode, in which a plotline revolving around an unarmed black teenager being taken down by a white police officer echoed the events of the 2014 shooting of Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
Unlike in Ferguson, where Darren Wilson was not charged for claiming the life of Brown, Scandal’s episode showed an officer being brought to justice through due process.
Rhimes explained the “wish fulfillment” storyline as a decision to choose hope after a huge debate between the writers.
As Ava DuVernay pointed out, an episode like “The Lawn Chair” isn’t easy to create, and the effort to make it was a victory in itself.
However, critics questioned some audience members’ abilities to separate fiction from harsher truths and saw a missed opportunity to explore the mechanics of institutionalized racism and the intricacies of prejudice.
Hurt: Katherine Heigl Wanted To Come Back (Grey’s)
After publicly shading the writing of Grey’s Anatomy in 2008 when she withdrew from Emmy consideration, Katherine Heigl took multiple leaves of absence and quit the show in 2010 on bad terms in pursuit of a movie career.
Two years after her departure, Heigl said she wanted to return to Grey’s and Shonda Rhimes politely declined (although she would later essentially call Heigl an "a**hole" in an interview about Scandal).
In 2012, Grey’s was in its eighth season, exploring Alex Karev’s status as a social pariah for snitching on Meredith, who had altered her Alzheimer’s trial, and ending with the tragic plane crash that informed much of the emotional subtext of the next season.
Reintroducing Izzie’s character during one of the most heartbreaking plotlines of the show would’ve undermined the social dynamics that the show had finally built and deepened after losing so many of its principal cast.
Her return would have been artistically ill-advised, regardless of whether she was hard to work with or not.
Hurt: Scandal Originally Ended With Mellie Becoming POTUS (Scandal)
Bellamy Young, who portrays former leader Mellie Grant, revealed in an interview that Shonda Rhimes planned Scandal’s final moments to include Mellie being sworn in as POTUS.
Instead, Rhimes used the show’s final season to explore gender politics in relation to the current climate.
When Scandal began, the first black leader was in charge and the escalation of the alt-right that occurred during the 2016 election was an unthought-of nightmare for much of Scandal’s creative team.
It’s only natural that Scandal altered its plans to react to the world we now live in, even if by that time the show itself had devolved into a repetitive spy-drama.
Saved: Tom Was Going To Pass Away (Scandal)
Tom is kind of the worst. He seemed like a kind, loyal, and boring Secret Service agent until season three when he takes the life of the leader's son as an undercover agent for B-613.
He thought it was a good idea to follow Rowan, then Jake, and shows that he has horrible taste in men when he starts a relationship with Cyrus Beene.
Yet, Shonda Rhimes and the Scandal writers loved him too much to cut him off during the series, even though they wrote his demise into multiple scripts.
He never seemed entirely necessary to the show, and furthering his story in season five without being committed for taking the life of of Jerry Grant Jr. doesn’t make much sense in a show that revolves around bringing people to justice.
Hurt: Ethan Was A Doomed Villain (The Catch)
Ethan Ward’s character arc was altered drastically after the production team developed an affinity for the actor who portrayed him, Warren Christie.
Originally the Big Bad of season two in addition to Mockingbird, Warren’s chemistry with Mireille Enos, who played his ex-fiancé Alice Vaughan, changed the course of the season.
As a villain, Ethan would have been sent to jail by Alice’s private investigation firm AVI. Instead, he tried to win back Alice while investigating his then-fiancé Gretchen’s fashion business before having his money laundered by Mockingbird and helping Margot and Tessa escape the FBI through the use of his own personal jet and airport.
Ethan’s addition to the cast deepened the love stories in The Catch by being revealed as the inspiration for Ben’s fiancé character when conning Alice and creating the Casablanca parallels in the series’ final episode.
Hurt: Cristina’s Father Was A Major Donor To The Hospital (Grey’s)
Cristina Yang’s relationship with her family is strained. Her mother is only seen three times in a show that has lasted for over a decade, and she is depicted as a vapid, nagging woman who just wants her successful surgeon daughter to be a stay-at-home mother.
Her father passed away with his heart in her hands when she was nine, and her step-father, Saul Rubenstein, is rarely mentioned and never shown on-screen.
It’s hard to imagine a world in which Cristina becomes embroiled in scandal and her father subsequently becomes a major donor to Seattle Grace, but before Shonda Rhimes shuffled around plotlines for the second season of Grey’s, this was almost the case.
Thankfully, Cristina is an independent woman whose success comes from hard work and ambition, not family money.
Saved: Callie Was Returning (Grey’s)
Jessica Capshaw, who portrayed Dr. Arizona Robbins on Grey’s, departed the show earlier this year without her ex-wife Callie Torres, disappointing fans and Shonda Rhimes, who seems open to her return at any time.
While the characters still reunited over text during Arizona’s last episode, apparently it was rival network CBS who prevented the on-screen reunion.
The actress who plays Callie, Sara Ramirez, is under contract with CBS for the show Madam Secretary.
Rhimes also wants Kate Walsh’s Dr. Addison Montgomery back on the show, which has been thwarted by Walsh’s lack of availability.
Having Callie return would have been the proper way to say goodbye to Arizona, and bringing back either beloved former cast member could have perked up fans after losing Patrick Dempsey’s character a season before.
Hurt: If Tessa Was An Impersonator (The Catch)
Teenaged troublemaker Tessa Riley was an important part of the second season of the short-lived Shondaland drama The Catch.
Tessa had an intimate relationship with a lieutenant at the Kensington firm and hired The Hammer to take down Margot Bishop, her biological mother, before working with Felicity to take down her own family.
She then unexpectedly betrayed Felicity and fled from the FBI with Margot.
It was a lot of deception to cram into seven episodes, but initially, Tessa was meant to have an even shorter arc on the show as a 32-year-old who was impersonating the daughter of Ben and Margot.
She would've been a loyal follower of Felicity and would've been taken down by Margot, in a turn of events that would have somehow been both more and less confusing than Tessa’s canon plotline.
Hurt: Laurel Shot Annalise (HTGAWM)
Showrunner and mastermind behind HTGAWM Pete Nowalk really thought that Laurel Harding shot Annalise Keating.
HTGAWM’s second season first asked the question of who shot Annalise, followed by the question of why.
Wes shot Annalise as part of an elaborate cover-up, because the characters on HTGAWM really seem to only have one hobby, but only attempted to make the shot fatal after learning that Annalise lied to him about his girlfriend Rebecca’s demise.
This chain of events makes the most sense and sets up the secondary mystery of the season regarding Wes’ family history, so altering it to make Laurel the shooter would have involved creating a more improbable explanation.
Overall, this would've been much less fun.
Saved: Cristina's Ectopic Pregnancy was meant to be an abortion (Grey’s)
Cristina Yang did eventually have an abortion in season eight of Grey’s Anatomy. It had been discussed in Grey’s before, both with Cristina in season one and when Addison Montgomery was pregnant with Mark’s child.
By finally going through with the storyline in season eight, Shonda Rhimes was able to discuss a woman’s right to choose four years before she would revisit it in less depth on Scandal.
However, Cristina’s season one ectopic pregnancy was conceived as an abortion.
At the time, Rhimes faced push back from the studio. Seven years later, Grey’s had reached a level of success that she didn’t have to ask anyone’s permission.
It seems unreasonable that a focused doctor like Cristina would become accidentally pregnant not once, but twice. Too many characters in Shondaland suffer from accidental pregnancies when birth control is both legal and accessible.
Hurt: Russia Was Going To Hack Season 6's Election (Scandal)
Scandal’s sixth season already hit close to home in its depiction of Frankie Vargas narrowly defeating Mellie Grant in its election.
The season’s subsequent storyline followed Olivia Pope realizing that the government of Russia had tampered with the US election.
The plot was abandoned after the writers learned that Russia may have actually interfered with the US.
Because the issues within our current climate have been aggravated by the sheer amount of false information circulating, fictionalizing the interference in an election for entertainment would have only made it more difficult to separate fact from fiction.
Saved: Original Cast Members Could Have Returned For The 300th episode (Grey’s)
Grey’s Anatomy recently celebrated its 300th episode, a feat reached by only six live action scripted series in the 21st century.
Executive producers asked multiple original cast members to return for the event and not even one made an appearance in the episode.
They tried to still incorporate them through the use of doppëlgangers in the episode paying tribute to Cristina, George, and Izzie.
However, paying tribute to these characters was just a reminder of how far the show has come since its original cast members were all onscreen, and not necessarily in a good way.
The current season wasn’t strong enough to simply reminisce on the glory days without actually revisiting any of the characters.
Saved: Marcus Becomes An Official (Scandal)
First introduced in “The Lawn Chair”, activist Marcus Walker was a surprising but welcome addition to OPA and Scandal during its last three seasons.
Eventually becoming a love interest actually worthy of Mellie Grant during the end of season five, he became the Press Secretary, then ran Fitz’s foundation.
A deleted scene from the final episode shows that Marcus becomes a U.S. official.
Marcus deserved the opportunity to succeed by his own merit and not due to the intervention of the Grant family, and ending the series with him using his talents as an individual and an activist to create real change would be a more respectful end for a respectable character.
Hurt: Cristina Was Going To Have Izzie’s Biggest Plotline (Grey's)
Cristina’s dramatic storyline in Grey’s included her falling in love with a patient who had one foot in the grave. It’s safe to assume this patient would pass away of a stroke following a heart transplant that was put into motion when Cristina cut his LVAD wire, prompting her to quit the surgical program.
Yes, Cristina almost had the plotline that won Katherine Heigl her Emmy Award.
The chemistry between Heigl and Jeffery Dean Morgan, who portrayed Denny Duquette, led to a realistic and beautifully acted depiction of love and loss.
Cristina’s breakdown after being left at the alter by Dr. Burke is one of the most iconic scenes in the series, and would have never happened if she was dealing with the fallout from losing her fiancé during that season.
Everyone ended where they needed to be.
Saved: Huck Tortures and Probably claims the life of Cyrus (Scandal)
If Tom is kind of the worst, Cyrus Beene is the absolute worst. His unbridled ambition led to the dissolution of his marriage to a wonderful man who he nearly claims the life of, the demise of Amanda Tanner, the near-demise of Hollis Doyle, the impeachment of Mellie Grant, and the demise of David Rosen, the only morally stable character in the series.
At worst, he’s a serial assassin. At best, he’s a mildly unsuccessful serial assassin.
In another deleted scene from Scandal’s finale, Huck arrives at Cyrus’s home with his torture toolbox at to get justice for David, presumably taking down Cyrus in the process.
This would’ve been a more fitting end for the character than living to fight (hopefully leader) Olivia Pope another day.
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Can you think of any other canceled plot twists that would've hurt or saved Shondaland? Let us know in the comments!