Grey’s Anatomy has spent years figuring out how to exist without Meredith Grey and Derek Shepherd at the centre of every emotional crisis. Season 23 may finally have its answer, with Lucas Adams and Simone Griffith increasingly positioned as the show’s next major will-they-won’t-they couple.
The season 23 trailer suggests their messy relationship is far from finished. Lucas and Simone became close after joining Grey Sloan Memorial as part of the new group of residents introduced in season 19, and their attraction quickly became one of the rebooted ensemble’s more persistent storylines.
Their relationship has hardly followed a straight line. Simone nearly married former fiancé Trey, while Lucas remained firmly in her orbit. Later, their different expectations created another obstacle: Lucas was thinking about a future together while Simone was less interested in making those plans. Season 22 separated them romantically, with Simone becoming involved with Wes Bryant, but it never completely closed the door.
That door appears wide open again.
Lucas and Simone hooked up late in season 22, and Lucas subsequently reconsidered what he wanted after Simone helped him through the emotional fallout surrounding Katie’s death. There is, naturally, a complication. Wes has attempted to turn his relationship with Simone into something more serious, creating precisely the sort of romantic triangle Grey’s Anatomy has relied upon since its earliest seasons.
The Meredith and Derek comparisons are difficult to miss, although calling Lucas and Simone direct replacements would oversimplify what the series is doing. Meredith and Derek’s early relationship similarly revolved around bad timing, other partners and two people repeatedly discovering that staying apart was considerably easier in theory than practice.
There are character echoes, too. Lucas carries the Shepherd name and the expectations attached to his family, while Simone has her own painful history with Grey Sloan Memorial. Those connections give the current storyline links to the show’s past without requiring it to literally recreate Meredith and Derek.
That distinction matters. Grey’s Anatomy premiered in 2005, and trying to manufacture another MerDer more than two decades later would risk making its younger cast feel like substitutes rather than characters capable of carrying the series themselves.
Season 23 instead has an opportunity to borrow the formula rather than the relationship: ambitious doctors, questionable decisions, inconvenient attraction and personal drama colliding with hospital life. Lucas and Simone already have most of those ingredients. The bigger question is whether Grey’s Anatomy can turn their chemistry into something memorable enough to stand without Meredith and Derek’s shadow.
