ABC renews medical-drama 'Grey's Anatomy' for Season 18 with Ellen Pompeo

WASHINGTON: The fans of much-loved medical drama 'Grey's Anatomy' now have a reason to rejoice as ABC has announced that the show will be renewed at least through Season 18, with star Ellen Pompeo extending her contract to continue playing Dr Meredith Grey.

According to Variety, the medical drama, currently in its 17th season, is television's Number 1 entertainment show in the key 18 to 49 demographic among the networks that report ratings, drawing 8.3 million total viewers and a 2.0 in the demo in delayed viewing.

With the following announcement, ABC also informed about the renewed 'Station 19,' a 'Grey's Anatomy' spinoff, for the fifth season. The two dramas are ABC's most-watched scripted shows.

This year, long time actors of the show both Giacomo Gianniotti and Jesse Williams has been shed from the star cast as the duo left within the past few months. However, Variety has confirmed that original cast members Chandra Wilson and James Pickens Jr. are set to return for Season 18 along with Pompeo.

Krista Vernoff -- executive producer of 'Grey's Anatomy' and 'Station 19,' and the creator of the new legal drama, 'Rebel' - renewed a new multi-year deal with ABC Signature in March, and she will continue to run both 'Grey's' and 'Station 19.' ABC has not yet announced the fate of 'Rebel.'

As reported by Variety, in Pompeo's new contract, she will remain the highest-paid female actor on television. She's also a producer of "Grey's."

Both 'Grey's' and 'Station 19" have been set in the world of the pandemic this season, and have illustrated how frontline workers have tackled COVID-19.

Early on in 'Grey's,' Meredith contracted COVID-19, and for much of the season, she drifted in and out of consciousness, illustrated by sequences on a beach in which she was visited by some of the show's characters who've died --and there have been a lot of them. She saw her late husband, Derek (Patrick Dempsey), her friends George (T.R. Knight) and DeLuca (Giacomo Gianniotti), and her sister, Lexie (Chyler Leigh).

When "Grey's Anatomy" premiered on ABC in 2005 - having been created by Shonda Rhimes - no one expected it to become the longest-running primetime medical drama in TV history.

It outlasted both 'MASH"' (11 seasons) and 'ER' (15 seasons), the previous record-holder. From the start, the show's inclusive casting, in which BIPOC actors played doctors in positions of power at the Seattle hospital where the show is set, changed popular culture.