Grey’s Anatomy Fans Are Freaking Out About This Moment in the Season 17 Premiere

Spoilers ahead for the newest episode of Grey's Anatomy.

Grey's Anatomy is back—and not a moment too soon.

As expected, the season 17 premiere addressed the coronavirus pandemic head-on, with the doctors of Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital facing a flood of COVID-19 patients, new safety protocols, and a lack of PPE for medical staff. It's very dramatic stuff, but there's one moment from the end of the episode that has everyone talking.

Obviously, Ellen Pompeo's Meredith Grey is at the center of the story, as we see her navigating through the new normal of being a doctor in a pandemic; plus, she's helping stage an intervention for her ex-boyfriend Andrew DeLuca, in hopes that he'll confront his mental health issues.

But in the episode's final moments, a very, very familiar face appears: Derek Shepherd. Yes, that's right: McDreamy, who died in season 11 in 2015, is back—at least in Meredith's head. Patrick Dempsey appears in a dream sequence at the beach when Mer passes out in the hospital parking lot—and it was as shocking and emotional as you'd expect.

"The most important task we had this season was to honor the reality of this global pandemic and the impact it's having—particularly on health care workers," showrunner Krista Vernoff said in a statement to E! News. "Along with that we had to come up with creative ways to allow our show to still be fun and romantic and provide some escapism. Enter Patrick Dempsey. The beach motif—which will continue beyond the premiere—provided a way for us to live outside the pandemic even for a little while here and there. And Derek's return provided pure joy for us, for Meredith, and for the fans. Season 17 has been a Herculean effort by our cast, our crew, our writers, and our partners at Disney and ABC—and we are proud of it. But our effort is nothing compared to the work of our frontline health care workers to whom this season is dedicated. We hope our show inspires you to wear your masks to protect them and each other. As Derek Shepherd would say, ‘It's a beautiful day to save lives.’”

“It’s more than the one scene you saw, Nellie, and it was just joyful. I really want to echo that,” Vernoff told Deadline. “Patrick and Ellen and I were all there at the beginning of this; I wasn’t there for the pilot, but I was there for the first seven seasons, and that was 17 years ago. That was, like, a lifetime ago; my kids weren’t alive. It was so wild to walk out on that beach, and just be together again as these different people that we are now. But I can’t overstate how joyful and healing an experience this was.”

It was apparently a surprise for many of the cast and crew too.

Even the show's creator, Shonda Rhimes, weighed in on Twitter:

Fans were naturally pumped.

While we're at it, can we bring back Sandra Oh's Cristina Yang too?

Originally Appeared on Glamour