'Grey's Anatomy' Premiere Barely Mentioned Alex Karev & Twitter Is Freaking Out

Louisa Ballhaus

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We’re still unclear on what exactly led to Justin Chamber’s exit from Grey’s Anatomy — as fans, we were certainly shocked to hear the news earlier this month. And while we also knew we wouldn’t be seeing Dr. Alex Karev on the show again (ABC confirmed that his last episode had already aired), we were still hoping for more of a sendoff than we got last night. Grey’s Anatomy barely mentioned Alex Karev’s departure in their Season 16 midseason premiere (and first crossover with Station 19) last night, and Twitter, uh, has some feelings about how they handled it.

Grey’s Anatomy is known for giving characters big, dramatic goodbyes. And after Alex’s 16 years on the show, he’d certainly earned it. But instead of, say, devoting an episode to Alex’s farewell, last night’s premiere only briefly mentioned Alex. In his last episode, which aired November 16, Alex flew to Iowa to care for his mother — in last night’s episode, it’s confirmed (in passing) that that’s still where he is. We find out that McWidow has taken over his job at Grey Sloan, and then that’s pretty much it.

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“So they’re really gonna leave us with Alex visiting his mom and that’s it,” one fan tweeted. “‘Alex is in Iowa,'” another fan quoted from the episode. “FOREVER??!!! Are they gonna make his plane go down?! Someone make this exit make sense, please.”

Other fans were upset at how ABC had handled the whole situation — if Justin Chambers was asking for more money, for example, couldn’t they have just paid him?! And another fan had an idea for who could have exited instead: “I already miss Alex Karev y’all couldn’t have gotten rid of Owen instead??”

Mostly, fans are just devastated to say goodbye to one of their all-time faves: “Greys Anatomy without Alex Karev is rough. I miss you,” a tweet reads.

After all, he was one of the few remaining original cast members — he was with us from the very beginning!

And as for the show trying to distract us with shiny new doctors…not so fast. “This new peds doctor ain’t doing it for me,” one fan weighs in. “No one can ever replace DR. ALEX KAREV.”

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