Spoiler alert! This story discusses the Grey’s Anatomy Season 22 finale, which can be streamed with either a Netflix subscription or a Hulu subscription if you need to catch up. (And you should get on that, STAT!)It’s been a long, hot summer without our favorite Seattle surgeons gracing our screens each Thursday, and with weeks still to go until Grey’s Anatomy returns to the 2026 TV schedule for Season 23, I’m starting to get impatient. Thinking back to Meredith Grey’s shocking proposal to Nick Marsh in the Season 22 finale made me realize I hadn’t watched the characters’ meet-cute (if you can call a medical emergency "cute") since that episode aired back in 2018. I decided to do a rewatch, and it was only then that I realized similarities between that episode and the proposal.Scott Speedman’s debut on Grey’s Anatomy came in Season 14’s “One Day Like This.” It was a one-off appearance from the Felicity alum (or so we thought), whose transplant surgeon promptly returned to life in Minnesota after Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) saved his life (and his kidney). Four seasons later, in the Season 18 premiere, Nick Marsh walked back into Meredith’s life for her greatest love story since Derek “McDreamy” Shepherd. Here’s what I discovered when I rewatched Nick Marsh’s introduction.(Image credit: Hulu)Nick Being In The Hospital Wasn’t The Only Thing The Proposal Episode Had In Common With Season 14There are a couple of pretty obvious parallels between Nick Marsh’s first appearance on Grey’s Anatomy and the episode where he and Meredith get engaged. The surgeon being a patient at Grey Sloan Memorial is a big one, with Meredith yet again saving Nick’s life when he had a blood clot in his renal vein. In fact, if this whole bridge collapse was engineered just to give Nick the opportunity to deliver the following line, I’m perfectly OK with that.I’ve wanted to marry you since the last time I was in this bed.However, what I hadn’t seen before was that both episodes made Meredith reflect on losing her husband, Derek Shepherd. In 2018’s “One Day Like This,” she acknowledges to Alex Karev (Justin Chambers) that despite her and Nick’s obvious chemistry, there was no chance of romance because he lived in Minnesota and was her patient. She said:I really like the way my life is now, I just… He made me feel something that I haven’t felt since Derek.Jump ahead to Season 22’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” and Nick’s medical emergency allows Meredith to push past the fear of losing another husband. When Nick responds to her proposal by asking how badly he was hurt, she says:Bad enough to make me think about all the people I’ve lost. And I really don’t want to lose you. It turns out me not being married to you isn’t protecting me from anything. And I love you, and I love our life together. I don’t want my fear to get in the way of that anymore.I also noticed a pattern between Nick and Meredith that I hadn’t seen before.(Image credit: Hulu)Meredith Has A Way Of Reeling Nick Back In When His Mind Starts RacingThere’s a beautiful thing that happens between these two surgeons that I hadn’t consciously picked up on before. In both Grey’s Anatomy episodes I rewatched, Meredith walks Nick back when his mind starts to spiral. It was in a lighthearted way in the Season 22 finale, when Nick incredulously asks his new fiancée if she wants a wedding, and Meredith nips that in the bud real quick, saying:You are getting carried away. No flowers or white dresses or poems.He didn’t even have to say all of those things for Meredith to know how his brain worked. The circumstances were more serious at their first meeting in Season 14. Nick Marsh was fretting at the thought of losing his kidney or dying and thus leaving his niece without a guardian. He begs Meredith:Nick: Just tell me I didn’t screw this up, Dr. Grey. Tell me I’m not gonna lose this kidney.Meredith: Well, we have to wait for your labs to come back. I’ll do an ultrasound, and let’s not get ahead of ourselves.Time and again in that episode, his mind starts to wander to dark places, and Meredith calmly brings his focus back to the facts. I think any good doctor might do the same with any patient, but the fact that she continues to do it throughout their relationship proves just how well they complement each other.What I love most about these two parallel moments is that they represent the effect Meredith has had on Nick — his mind at one time jumped immediately to the worst-case scenario, but now the thoughts that flooded his head are all the ways he could celebrate becoming Meredith’s husband.(Image credit: Hulu)I’d Forgotten How Much Chemistry Meredith And Nick Had Right Off The BatIt really would have been a missed opportunity if Grey’s Anatomy had never brought back Scott Speedman, because man, he and Ellen Pompeo were electric in that one 2018 episode. Nick was so flirty, calling his hospital stay their first date, despite Meredith’s protests (which, incidentally paralleled Meredith’s insistence that she wasn’t going to sleep when Nick when they reunited in Season 18 more than three years later). Nick and Meredith really went deep with their conversations that day in the hospital, opening up about their families and what they’d do if they couldn’t practice medicine. That Season 14 episode gave added weight to his effect on her life when it ended on a flashback of a younger Meredith, looking hopeful at the possibility of love while her voiceover said:One single day can fill us with more possibilities than we could imagine.No wonder fans got upset when Nick’s lone episode was followed by the introduction of a love triangle between Meredith, Atticus Lincoln (Chris Carmack) and Andrew DeLuca (Giacomo Gianniotti). Grey’s Anatomy itself had already told us Nick was her best romantic option.So what’s to come in Season 23 for Meredith and Nick? Realistically, how much we see of them might depend on Scott Speedman’s schedule. His other ABC drama, R.J. Decker, was renewed for a second season, which premieres at 10 p.m. ET Tuesday, September 15. Assuming, however, that he will make time in his busy schedule to marry Grey’s Anatomy’s titular character, my guess is that the grandeur of their nuptials will fall somewhere in between Meredith and Derek’s Post-It wedding and their heart-wrenching beach vow renewal ceremony from Meredith’s COVID hallucination.Either way, I’ll definitely be keeping my eyes open for any more callbacks to Meredith and Nick’s sweetest moments when Grey’s Anatomy Season 23 premieres at 10 p.m. ET Thursday, October 15, on ABC and streaming the next day on Hulu.