Station 19's New Boss Promises a 'Messier, Grittier' Season 3

Charlie Mason

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If you’ll pardon the pun, Station 19 is turning up the heat in Season 3.

“I think it’s quite a different show this year,” executive producer Krista Vernoff tells our sister site, Deadline. “It’s messier visually, and it’s messier emotionally than it’s ever been.”

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As the Grey’s Anatomy boss added to her duties the running of its firehouse-set spinoff, “I kept coming back to this image of sweat and soot and feeling like that needed to be a thing on this show, that it needed to feel grittier in all ways” — including its relationships. So “people are a little less polite this season, a little less kind, a little more competitive and dirtier, literally and metaphorically.”

Since the two series are switching time slots when Station 19 kicks off Season 3 and Grey’s resumes Season 16 on Thursday, Jan. 23, Vernoff will be able to plot more linear crossovers. “Ever since Station 19 premiered, in the writers’ room, we always thought the better progression was from firefighters to the hospital,” she says. Now, “with Station 19 airing at 8 o’clock and Grey’s airing at 9, there are very organic opportunities for Grey’s to, for example, inherit patients we see rescued on Station 19.”

That will start with the shows’ Jan. 23 episodes, in which Grey’s‘ fall finale cliffhanger is resolved in Station 19’s premiere. It was only logical, Vernoff says, for the action to pick up with the spinoff’s first responders leaping into action to rescue the characters — including Grey’s‘ Jackson, Levi and Nico, and Station 19’s Ben and Chief Herrera — who were left in jeopardy when a car smashed into Joe’s Bar.

What do you think? Have you watched the crossover trailer below? Will you tune in to Station 19 to see what happens to Jackson & Co? Or will you just wait to find out on Grey’s?

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