A fan-favorite character sadly died as a part of the Station 19 series finale.
The firehouse-based drama set in the Grey's Anatomy universe ended on May 30 with its long-awaited last episode of Season 7.
After weeks of teases (including putting a different character in peril to end its penultimate episode), everything came to a head in Season 7, Episode 10, confirming the fate of the Seattle firehouse the series is centered on.
A Major Death in the Station 19 Finale
Warning - The rest of this article contains spoilers for the Station 19 series finale.
Station 19 aired its series finale on Thursday, May 30, killing a beloved character.
Following several teases leading into the last episode, only one major causality was seen in the series finale.
In Season 7, Episode 10 (subtitled "One Last Time"), the team was tasked with fighting one final blaze at a Washington state resort.
As a part of this sequence, the fire grew too much for the members of Seattle Firehouse 19. All this came to a dramatic climax as the firefighting crew witnessed their first-ever fire tornado.
While most of the crew managed to escape the blaze, Kiele Sanchez's Kate Powell was not as fortunate.
Upon spotting the tornado, Kate's team tries to warn their colleague. Their efforts are for naught, though.
Kate, unable to hear them, is swallowed by the cyclonic inferno and dies on the spot.
The tornado would burn through the crew's water line and become impossible to control. The best they could do was mourn their friend and hope the fire tornado passed before they could douse the blaze and put an end to the carnage.
Kate Powell had been a part of Station 19 since Season 6, coming in as a cocky, arrogant firefighter who rubbed much of the team the wrong way.
Over her two seasons in the series, she became known for going rogue or walking to the beat of her drum in situations she might not have.
That is not to say her death was caused by this 'I'll do it my way' attitude, but it ultimately may have played into it.
Why Did Station 19 Kill Kate?
Kate's death in the Station 19 finale will likely come as a shock to many.
For several weeks, fans had thought a death was coming to end the series, but Kate was not high on the list of characters expected to kick the dust.
And apparently, the creative team behind the fire-fighting drama knew this would be the conversation coming into the series finale.
Speaking to Variety on the finale, Showrunner Peter Paige revealed there were lots of conversations about who (if anyone) should die at the series' end.
He said, "There were a lot of people" they considered killing off before settling on Kate:
"Oh my God, yeah. A million. My God, the conversations, the arguments, the back and forth. There were a lot of people in jeopardy for various periods of time — just not the gays. Did anybody ever really think we were gonna bury our gays? Have they ever read an interview with Peter Paige or watched a Peter Paige production?"
Given the character's relative newness to the show, the creative team's decision to take this direction makes sense.
If they had chosen a bigger name, it could have soured the finale. Paige and the Station 19 brain trusty likely wanted to send fans out on a relatively happy note.
If a main character were going to die, they would likely do so in one of the episodes leading into the finale, giving the rest of the cast (and the audience) time to mourn/honor the legacy of a bigger character in the last episode itself.
Because Kate had only been around for two seasons, her death, while sad, did not warrant the kind of dramatic send-off that would have come with killing a more prominent character.
Station 19 is streaming now on Hulu.
