Over the past 10 seasons, Grey's Anatomy's Cristina Yang (played by Sandra Oh) has weathered breakups, plane crashes, crazed gunmen, actual exploding bazookas, cardiothoracic attendings unable to keep up with her talent, and hundreds of surgeries. As she's navigated that chaos, she's cemented herself as one of the most groundbreaking and memorable characters on television. Tonight, the show and everyone who watches it lose her.

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Audiences typically like their television heroines optimistic, kind, put-together, and maybe a little spunky. There's a reason why supportive moms like Tami Taylor, compassionate office mates like Pam Halpert, and twee romantics like Jess Day are so beloved. Bright, shiny characters are never in short supply; Grey's itself has had plenty over the years, from Izzie Stevens (smiler, baker, and marrier of dead men) to Arizona Robbins (healer of tiny humans and wearer of roller skate sneakers).

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Compared to them — compared to anyone — Cristina is undeniably dark and twisty. But what's progressive about the way the show has framed her character is that being undeniably dark and twisty doesn't make her an anti-hero. In a world where women are often encouraged to smile, be nice, and keep their feelings to themselves, Cristina does, feels, and says what she wants — and she's not painted as a bad person, or even an unhappy one, for it. That makes her a downright revolutionary character.

And then there's the Cristina/Meredith of it all. True friendship, rooted in something other than cattiness, superficiality, or talking about guys, is a rarity on television — if only because spotting two strong, fleshed-out female characters on a single television show in the first place is still pretty close to spotting a unicorn. (Parks and Rec's Leslie and Ann were a notable exception, until Rashida Jones left the show earlier this year.) And so while Meredith and McDreamy might be Grey's power couple, Meredith and Cristina are the series' most compelling love story.

"You're my person" has become so engrained in the way we talk about relationships that it's easy to forget that Cristina Yang (with the help of Grey's creator Shonda Rhimes) is the one who originally coined it, and who taught us that being someone's person can be entirely platonic. But that doesn't mean their relationship is easy. While we see other strong female characters fighting in primetime — The Good Wife offers some particularly memorable brawls — there's an intimacy to Meredith and Cristina that makes their conflict both more interesting and more difficult to watch.


Meredith and Cristina fight hard, and they fight about things that matter and aren't easily resolved: love, family, career. They spent much of this season existing in the tension that came from Cristina's belief that Meredith was letting her intensity as a surgeon wane in favor of focusing on motherhood. But as they've weathered that conflict, they've shown us that you can profoundly disagree with someone without losing your love for them, and that while it's hard to stay close to someone when your life choices start to really differ, it's ultimately very worth the effort.

In the non-platonic love department, it's always been clear that Cristina doesn't need a man (duh), but she certainly enjoys one when he's around. (Face it: She dominated the on-call room.) And watching her relationships unfold has been a fascinating insight into her character. Owen Hunt was walking trauma when he came into Cristina's life, equally likely to whisk her away to the air vent for a tryst as he was to lash out at her in a PTSD-induced rage. And yet Cristina was never swept away by the turmoil of that relationship. She was never anyone other than herself, and she was never afraid to assert limits. When Meredith, Callie, and her other friends insisted that being with someone who'd strangle her (with or without PTSD) was unacceptable, Cristina pointed out that he was mentally ill. She wouldn't automatically leave someone with physical illness; why should mental illness be any different? But what sets Cristina even further apart is that she was equally willing and able to admit that she'd been wrong — she couldn't handle being with Owen when he was in active crisis.

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By the time Cristina chose to terminate a pregnancy in the show's eighth season, abortion wasn't a completely taboo topic for network television. Cristina herself had scheduled an abortion in the show's earlier seasons, but miscarried before the procedure. What was (and still is) taboo was to portray a woman choose abortion confidently and without regret. It's far more common to see a character consider abortion and have a miscarriage (Party of Five's Julia Salinger), consider an abortion then decide against it (Lynette on Desperate Housewives), or to terminate a pregnancy and then grapple with profound emotional distress afterwards (Friday Night Lights' Becky Sproles).

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Cristina's different, though: She knows that motherhood isn't the right option for her (a fact that this season's Sliding Doors-style episode proved) and so she has an abortion. Even in the face of Owen's profound, continued grief over her decision, Cristina doesn't back down. When Owen changes gears during an argument and blurts out, "You killed our baby!" Cristina doesn't burst into tears, and she doesn't apologize. She doesn't manufacture regret. That's a landmark moment. She had the procedure, she knows it was right, and she owns it.

That said, watching Cristina evolve into a less pragmatic, more emotional person — without "changing" — over the past 10 seasons has been one of the great pleasures of sticking with the show. Way back in season two, in the wake of Denny Duquette's cut LVAD wire, Cristina sat in Chief Hunt's office and begged him to teach her to care less. "You've been doing this a long time, and you're clean, you're focused, you are the job, nothing gets to you. And the thing is, sir, I was like that, until I got here." That earlier version of Cristina interpreted caring as weakness and friendship as wasted energy. Now here she is in her final days at the hospital, tasked with finding its new head of cardio before she goes, and she's showing just how far she's come.

The candidates are underwhelming, and even the best of the bunch says he plans to turn down the job if it's offered to him, since Grey Sloan doctors are essentially barred from ever winning the Harper-Avery Award. "Isn't the prize the goal?" he asks. Time was when Cristina Yang would've enthusiastically agreed, but instead, she looks at him as though he's crazy. It's about the work, she counters. The work and the patient. "Making someone better or someone whole or someone live. That's the goal." Not the procedure. Not the prize. People. Cristina still is who she is, and the work is still important — it's the most important thing — but there's space within that to care.

And maybe that's the most revolutionary thing of all about who Cristina Yang grew into over the past 10 years: She's one of the first characters on television to prove that women really can have it all. I'm not talking about the tired definition of "all" where you have kids and a career and a successful marriage and probably a kitten and a stand-mixer, but the real "all," the "all" that matters: a life in which you care about your work, you love your people, and they love you too.

Thank you for that, Cristina. Now, everyone, dance it out.

[nakedmonkey.tumblr.com, via Buzzfeed]

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