'Grey's Anatomy' Teases Patrick Dempsey's Return: Watch the Promo

Grey's Anatomy
ABC

How will the doctors at Grey Sloan handle their latest devastating loss?

Grey's Anatomy said goodbye to a fan favorite during Thursday's midseason premiere, but a new teaser for next week's episode promised return of Patrick Dempsey's Derek Shepherd.

The aftermath of Andrew DeLuca's unexpected (and we'll say it, devastating) death following a fatal stab wound is bound to have a long-lasting, life-changing impact on his sister, Carina, and his fellow doctors at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. In the new promo promoting the following hour, appropriately titled "It's All Too Much," Webber does his best to keep the doctors from spiraling even more.

"Grey Sloan is a family and Andrew DeLuca was a member of that family," Webber rallies the troops, as Owen picks up DeLuca's badge. 

Owen assures Teddy that they did all they could to save him, but she's still feeling the guilt for not being able to be his savior. "And he's still dead," Teddy says as she walks away. 

Carina, understandably, is burdened with imaginable grief. "I want to scream until my throat hurts!" she tells Station 19's Maya in a moment of desperation. 

"We owe it to everyone we lost to live the lives they can't," Maggie declares, as Hayes asks a still-comatose Meredith "to fight."

Cut to the beach, or Meredith's "happy place," and she spots a familiar figure just down the shore. It's her late husband, Derek, happily fishing: "It's you again!"

If we had to say farewell to DeLuca, at least we'll have another Meredith and Derek reunion.

Watch the promo for next week's Grey's Anatomy below.

Following Thursday's episode, Gianniotti shared a short, but sweet message, after DeLuca's demise, thanking Grey's fans for their support for the past several years.

"So much I could say... but all that comes to mind is thank you. Thank you to all the fans who loved Deluca as much as I did. Telling his story was and will be one of the great honors of my life. Thank you," he tweeted.

"Everybody feels the loss. Everybody has worked with DeLuca. That's not just a loss for the doctors, it's a loss for the whole hospital that will echo and ripple through the entire hospital for the entire season, and then whatever seasons are to come," Gianniotti told ET of how they move on from DeLuca's death. "And if you're a Grey's Anatomy fan, you know that we've lost so many people over the years, but no one ever truly dies, whether it's a dream or a flashback or a memory or a text message, we continue to keep all those characters we've lost alive in some way. So it's not the last we'll hear of DeLuca. People are always kept alive in the hallways at Grey Sloan and they're talked about. But yeah, this is going to have a huge, huge impact on Grey Sloan and all the doctors. Most of all, I think, for Meredith when she wakes up and finds out."

Grey's Anatomy airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on ABC. For more, watch below.

To stay up to date on breaking TV news, sign up for ET's daily newsletter.

RELATED CONTENT: