Grey's Anatomy: Every Season Ranked Worst To Best

Season nine starts where season eight ends, with Meredith, Derek, Cristina, Mark, Lexie, and Arizona stranded following a plane crash. From there, it creates some of the show's most unforgettably heartbreaking drama from its immediate aftermath. 

The season starts as it means to go on, by killing Lexie just as she and Mark confess their love for each other. Afterward, the disasters keep coming. Mark dies after slipping in and out of a coma. Arizona loses a leg. Derek's career is derailed by a wounded hand. The survivors win a large sum of money, buy the hospital, and rename it Grey Sloan after Lexie and Mark. 

All of this may sound like too much, but the strength of season nine is how surprisingly measured it all is. We're given emotional insight into Derek and Mark's friendship, Jackson's role is expanded when he becomes the director of his grandfather's multi-billion dollar foundation, and in the end, despite everything, there's a real sense of peace. 

Season nine balances the melodrama and the emotional reality of its characters' world perfectly, constantly seeing how far it can push them without ever becoming gratuitously hopeless. Grey's has rarely been so daring or agonising before or since.