Grey's Anatomy's Shonda Rhimes Teases Half-Sister Twist, Possible New Romance

Patrick Dempsey, Ellen Pompeo

Grey's Anatomy may have shocked fans with another half-sister twist, but we actually should've seen it coming all along!

In the season finale, the new head of cardio Margaret Pierce (Kelly McCreary) was revealed to be the half-sister of Meredith (Ellen Pompeo), whom their mother Ellis Grey (Kate Burton) gave up for adoption. Her father? Dr. Webber (James Pickens Jr)!

Forgot what happened in the Grey's Anatomy finale? Read our recap here

How will Meredith react to this new revelation, especially in the wake of Cristina (Sandra Oh) leaving? TVGuide.com sat down with showrunner Shonda Rhimes to discuss the upcoming season, including the state of Meredith and Derek's (Patrick Dempsey) marriage after her sudden decision to stay in Seattle, how Amelia (Caterina Scorsone) will change the dynamic and how Alex (Justin Chambers) becoming a board member will shake up the hospital.

Will there be a time jump when Grey's returns? Shonda Rhimes: No. We're not going to time jump.

Introducing Maggie on the show is different from the other half-sisters because it also affects Richard. How will this change the hospital dynamic and how will you handle explaining how Ellis Grey was able to hide this pregnancy? Rhimes: What's interesting for us is that Maggie has been a piece of story that we have had and known about since Season 4 well, honestly since the beginning. That was one of the original pieces of story since the beginning with the Richard-Ellis dynamic, but it's been a piece of story since Season 4 when we talked about introducing her. We were going, "When's the right time?!" and we were holding it forever. I kept going, "Not this season, it's not right." After a while, I was like, "We're never going to introduce it. The show is going to end without it." Every time I thought the show was going to end, I was like, "Ah!" Then we hit this moment in time and I remember walking into the writers' room and going, "You guys, it's time." And all the writers knew exactly what I was talking about. It's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. Because we've all known about it for so long, it's always been layered it. It's not a thing where we're going in and backdating. It's literally always been layered into the story line. We can literally go back and pull out moments of the show and I'm excited to do so, and point out where it was talked about. It's not going to be so hard to do.

Do you need to bring back Sarah Paulson to show that? Rhimes: We've talked about the flashback moments and what to do with those. Sarah Paulson has a job, unfortunately. But, we've flashed back both with Kate Burton and Sarah Paulson at the same age. If you noticed the carousel moments with Richard and then Paulson in the hospital with young Richard, they were the same age, we just used younger actors for some reason. So, it can be done either way.

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How will Meredith feel about that? And will Webber keep this a secret or spill the beans fairly quickly? Rhimes: What Webber does with the information is going to be very interesting. When she left, she had said something to Richard. Whether Richard admits his part in it at all is going to be very interesting. It's very earth-shattering information. It undoes everything Meredith thought to be true about her past and her childhood. It's fascinating.

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Grey's Anatomy's Shonda Rhimes Teases Half-Sister Twist, Possible New Romance