[Note: Spoilers for last night’s Grey’s Anatomy finale are below.]
Callie Torres’ 10-year shift at Grey-Sloan Memorial Hospital has ended. As viewers of last night’s Grey’s Anatomy finale know, Torres left Seattle for New York last night, marking actor Sara Ramirez’s last appearance on the show for the foreseeable future.
Ramirez, who joined the show at the end of its second season, said in a statement that it was her decision to leave the show, expressing her thanks to both showrunner Shonda Rhimes and the rest of the Grey’s cast. She also doesn’t appear to have ruled out returning to the show for any future one-off appearances, as, unlike Patrick Dempsey’s Derek Shepherd, she wasn’t hit by a truck and declared brain-dead or whatever.
Ramirez’s Torres was originally brought onto the show as a love interest for T.R. Knight’s George, though later underwent dalliances with both Eric Dane’s Mark Sloan (though they were more fuck buddies than romantically involved) and Jessica Capshaw’s Arizona Robbins. In the season finale, she left Seattle to be with her latest paramour, Dr. Penelope Blake (Samantha Sloyan), at her fellowship in New York.