By Kennedy French, Payton Turkeltaub, Arushi Jacob
Courtesy of ABC After 18 seasons, Dr. Owen Hunt is finally leaving Grey Sloan Memorial, and honestly, the hospital will probably be fine.
Kevin McKidd, who joined “Grey’s Anatomy” in Season 5 in 2008, departed the ABC medical drama alongside Kim Raver in the Season 22 finale, which aired on May 7. Over his run, McKidd directed 49 episodes of the show and shaped one of the series’ most enduring and polarizing characters. To put it simply, Owen Hunt has never been a fan favorite.
In McKidd’s defense, none of this has to do with him. The Scottish actor gave nearly two decades to the role, and a silver lining to Owen’s exit is that he’s now free to play someone fans might actually root for. But he doesn’t take any of the online chatter personally; when Shonda Rhimes created the character, her goal was to add “a male character to the show who doesn’t care what people think and just does his own thing,” McKidd told Variety when discussing his exit from the series. “He was designed to be polarizing and provocative and kind of an antagonist at times. So it makes me laugh when people are like, ‘He annoys me.’ Yeah, that’s the point!” But in honor of Owen Hunt, the Army trauma surgeon with a hero complex, a communication problem and an apparently bottomless capacity for emotional damage, who has tested the patience of “Grey’s” fans for 17 seasons, we’re looking back at the moments — in chronological order — that made him the show’s most reliably unlikeable presence, from pig-stabbing to plane crashes to the long list of women he managed to make miserable along the way. A send-off befitting the man himself.
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Stabbing pigs for a skills lab
Image Credit: ©ABC/Courtesy Everett Collection In Season 5’s “Life During Wartime,” Owen introduced himself to the residents by pulling back a curtain to reveal four anesthetized pigs, stabbing them one by one, and then ordering everyone in the room to save their lives — as if this were a completely normal way to spend a Tuesday. It was not. Izzie Stevens walked out on the spot and called him a monster, which, in fairness, was also a completely normal reaction. To cap things off, once the lab was done, Owen had Cristina euthanize all four pigs. “Do no harm” was apparently more of a loose guideline than a founding principle. Great first week, buddy.
