How 'Grey’s Anatomy’ Put Together Derek's Final Moments

In April, Grey’s Anatomy killed off beloved original character Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd in a stunning episode titled “How to Save a Life.” But for the people behind the scenes, the question was really, “How to end a life?”

Whatever the motivation behind killing off Derek, actually putting it on screen was no easy task. Once the script had been written by creator Shonda Rhimes and the footage had been filmed by director Rob Hardy, editor Joe Mitacek had the unenviable task of cutting it all together.

“It was tough on our end, too. We’ve been with this character for 11 seasons at that point,” Mitacek tells Yahoo TV. “This one was obviously a huge moment. We all knew going into it that the reception was going to be tricky, understandably.”

Related: #RIP: A Look Back at the TV Characters We Lost in 2015

“Tricky” is one way of putting it. There’s also “devastating” and “heartbreaking.” A quick Twitter search provides a glimpse at the depths of despair over McDreamy’s demise.

The episode required a great deal of discussion about the proper tone, and that led to the idea of including flashbacks, or “memories,” as Mitacek called them.

“That had been a motif of the season. We wanted to, in the moment when Derek was dying, be able to step back through Meredith and Derek’s life together,” he says.

There were actually three sequences of memories in the episode. The first took place at the beginning, when Meredith first learned her husband had been in an accident. “The news hadn’t broken yet, so we did sort of a more impressionistic, ominous opening, where we were connecting events of Derek leaving in the past,” Mitacek explains.

In the middle of the hour, when Derek is hit by the truck, “We did this really rapid, quick shots of their life together over the course of the series. For that one, tonally, we did the good times and the bad times — a pure retrospective. Sort of, as you’d say, ‘Before you die, your life flashes before you.’ That was a visual way to interpret that,” he says.

And the last series of memories came as Meredith took Derek off life support. It was the hardest one to put together, Mitacek says. “We’ve got everything to show, what do you show at this particular moment in time? That was something we discussed quite a bit with Shonda,” he says. “Then Shonda said that he brought [Meredith] joy — he was able to unlock something in her that she hadn’t been able to really feel in the past. … So, we touched on the family, we showed moments of them being happy together.”

“We liked the idea of starting it with the first time they met,” he says. “It wasn’t the opening of the series — it was a few seasons down, when they had a flashback scene when they met in the bar. Derek says, ‘What’s your story?’ So, it’s set up that this is their story.”

The final montage was set to Sleeping At Last’s cover of Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars,” an iconic song in Grey’s Anatomy history. But it almost wasn’t — a different song (“You Were Supposed to Be Different” by Aron Wright) was originally meant to play over that montage.

“The show had been locked — it was finished, it was mixed, and it was the actual air date. We happened to be working on the episode that was going to follow it, which was the two-hour,” Mitacek says.

They were still finalizing songs to use for episode 22 (“She’s Leaving Home,” parts 1 and 2), and one was a cover of “Chasing Cars" by the Wind and the Wave. As a just-in-case-alternate, Mitacek also sent a version by Sleeping At Last.

“About five minutes later, I got a call from her, and she says, ‘Oh my god, my heart is breaking right now. The second version of the song you sent me would’ve been the perfect song for Derek’s death scene,’” he recalls.

“She said, ‘Well, just for kicks, can you cut it into the Derek dying scene just so I can see it?’ So I sent it to her, and the next thing I know it’s, ‘Can we get to the mix station and put this song in the show?’”

Remember, this is all happening on April 23 — just hours before the episode would air on ABC. “We’re racing the clock for a five o'clock West Coast time broadcast on the East Coast,” Mitacek says. “So, I lay the song in there. Amazingly, it doesn’t need to be edited in any way. It starts at the right point, it ends at the right point. It’s beyond serendipitous.”

From that point, it was all hands on deck. “Everyone got on it — they dropped things, they pulled the sound mixers off Scandal to come into another mixing stage. Oh yeah, it was crazy. I’ve never seen anything like this before,” he says.

The crew made it happen, though, and that version of “Chasing Cars” made it into the U.S. broadcast (the Aron Wright song played in international airings, as seen below).

“It was that song and it was that moment in that episode. It wouldn’t have been done under any other circumstances,” Mitacek says. “The drama of the show and the drama of the production of the show met for a moment there.”

Grey’s Anatomy returns with new episodes on Thursday, Feb. 11 at 8 p.m. on ABC.