Spoiler alert! This story discusses the Grey’s Anatomy Season 22 episode “Through the Fire,” which aired on the 2026 TV schedule on April 30 and can be streamed with a Hulu subscription if you need to catch up!

The stage is set for a pretty epic (and cliffhanger-filled) Grey’s Anatomy Season 22 finale next week, with the penultimate episode shaking things up all over the place. One doctor was fired, while Teddy and Owen took another step toward the door (existentially speaking, in Owen’s case), and we got a big character update in that Station 19 crossover. For me, though, what stuck out most about “Through the Fire” was Winston Ndugu’s admission of an “irrational” fear he has. Let's recap.

Honestly, the writing was on the wall for Blue Kwan (Harry Shum Jr.) the second he chose to inject a patient with an experimental drug against FDA orders, and sure enough, he was fired (off-camera) the second Webber found out Bailey had been covering for him. I don’t think he’s gone for good, though. He’s in the trailer for next week’s season finale, for one thing, so we'll have to see if and how he can get back in Webber's good graces.

More Owen And Teddy Drama Surrounds Their Impending Exits

Meanwhile, Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd) characteristically freaked out because Teddy Altman (Kim Raver) had the audacity to consider a wonderful job opportunity in Paris. Will his apology voicemail be the last time Teddy hears his voice? The bridge collapse that will dominate the season finale seemed to happen at the end of that voicemail, as Owen is cut off to the sound of crashing and mayhem.

We've known that Kevin McKidd and Kim Raver were leaving Grey's Anatomy following the Season 22 finale, and while story hints have been dropped, we haven't yet gotten a full picture of how their characters will depart — or what their relationship status will be when they do so. At this point, it seems Owen will be lucky to even survive his final episode (which, incidentally, McKidd is directing).

What Do You MEAN Carina Didn't Make An Appearance?

Lastly, we may not have seen Station 19’s Carina DeLuca return after her wife Maya Bishop (Danielle Savre) was badly injured in a fire, but we did get an update on the couple’s daughter. Carina was pregnant in the Station 19 series finale, and in the April 30 Grey’s Anatomy episode, Maya revealed that they’d named the baby Andrea DeLuca-Bishop — an obvious reference to Carina’s brother Andrew, who was murdered in Season 17.

Unlike Jason George's character Ben Warren, who was able to jump back into Grey's Anatomy after Station 19 was canceled, Stefania Spampinato was apparently not invited back to the series where Carina originated. There have been several mentions of her, as Carina canonically still works at Grey Sloan Memorial, but she seems to always be conveniently out of town when someone goes into emergency labor or her wife gets admitted with life-threatening burns. Not seeing her here was disappointing, but I still LOVE this Marina update.

Now We Have To Talk About Winston Ndugu.

Winston Ndugu and Jules Millin (Anthony Hill and Adelaide Kane) had a heart-to-heart after their plans for a sexy hotel tryst were scuttled by the blaze that injured Maya. Millin admitted that she was into crystals and that she’d seen the fire as a bad omen. Ndugu brushed off her embarrassment, saying, “Everyone has weird things.” When she looked doubtful that he could match her, he revealed:

Wait, what? Winston Ndugu, who holds hearts in his hands for a living, is afraid of YARN?! Millin confirmed it’s not just scarves, but his fear includes blankets, mittens and other creature comforts. Ndugu continued:

What a bizarre turn that took! And I am in no way mocking anyone’s actual fear of yarn. I dug into this a little, and linonophobia — the fear of string, yard or rope — is a real thing, though that’s often associated with being tied up or restrained, and it reportedly doesn’t typically affect clothing choices.

However, there are a lot of people with tactile sensitivities who may have aversions to certain fabrics, etc. Like Ndugu, those people can find ways to manage so that these things go largely undetected by others around them.

In this specific case, though, it does seem quite an interesting character trait to introduce six seasons into Ndugu’s time on the show. Was it written just so he’d have a quirk equal to Millin’s belief in the energy of crystals? If we go back through the past six seasons, will we really see no sweaters or knit scarves or anything? Is this possibly something Anthony Hill deals with in real life?

I’m thinking it’s probably the first of those options, though I’d definitely be open to Grey’s Anatomy normalizing the sensory issues that people face and often feel forced to mask.

Whether this is a developing storyline or not remains to be seen, and there’s a real good possibility I’m taking this way too seriously. But even if it was just a throwaway admission — a means to an end to get Ndugu and Millin into bed, crystals be damned — it’s a detail that I haven’t quite been able to shake.

I won’t let it distract me from everything that’s to come in next week’s season finale, though. Is Kwan gone for good? Will Owen make it out alive? Will Teddy thwart the trope of giving up Paris for a mediocre man? We don’t have to wait long to find out. The Grey’s Anatomy Season 22 finale airs at 10 p.m. ET Thursday, May 7, on ABC.

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