Mer told him she’d miss him if she went back and he didn’t, and he said she’d be OK, but did anyone stop to wonder if we, the viewers, would be OK?
We hopped on the phone with Gianniotti and made him relive the moment when he learned DeLuca’s terrible fate.
Long before last night’s episode, titled “Helplessly Hoping,” was set to film, Gianniotti was asked to come into showrunner Krista Vernoff‘s office, along with executive producer Debbie Allen.
“They kind of jumped right to it and said, ‘We’ve been in the writers room for a long time going back and forth, and we’re trying to come up with something for the midseason finale, and we’ve tried it a million different ways and it just keeps coming back that the story to tell is to bring back the sex trafficking storyline…and close the loop,'” Gianniotti recalls to E! News. “But the unfortunate part would be that DeLuca would meet his demise, but he would die a hero to stop this woman.'”
DeLuca did meet his demise as a hero after spending an entire episode of Station 19 tailing a known child kidnapper alongside his sister, Carina (Stefania Spampinato). It was a brave but pretty stupid decision for a lot of reasons, mainly because he’s a doctor and not really authorized to chase after criminals through the streets of Seattle.