Patrick Dempsey had time left on his contract, so fans were not expecting Shonda Rhimes to pull the plug on him last night. For those of you that don’t know, he plays Derek Shepard on Grey’s Anatomy, and has been the main love interest for all eleven season. For the past two weeks, he’s been missing in one of the most excruciating narrative arcs ever. And there have been some tough ones on a show known for its implausible amount of tragedy. Last night, he gets hit by a semi in one of the first episodes written by Shonda herself in a long time.
According to Nielsen Social, 620,000 tweets about Grey’s Anatomy were seen 44 million times last night by 5.2 million people. According to Twitter, there were 77,000 tweets that specifically mentioned RIP Derek or RIP McDreamy, his nickname since episode one.