Overall, season 13 will focus on the show’s original stars — Meredith, Alex, Bailey (Chandra Wilson) and Richard (James Pickens Jr.), who all just inked new deals to return to the veteran drama.

“There is going to be a lot of checking in with the original cast; we love them so much and there has been such a renaissance with the show that it’s nice to focus on the core pieces that have been there since the very beginning,” Scorsone says, referring to the unlikely accomplishment that a show in its 13th season would be back on top at the network.

(…) For Alex, Jo and Andrew, meanwhile, season 13 will begin with the wake of Alex’s beat-down of Andrew and Jo’s decision about whether or not to tell her boyfriend that she’s already married.

“Jo has got to decide whether she wants to use this opportunity to finally come clean to Alex about her past or if it’s just too great and she’ll keep burying the secret. But if she chooses to bury the secret, she chooses to lose Alex,” Gianniotti says.

Andrew, however, will have a more central role with Alex this season than ever after the brutal beating. “Because Alex misinterpreted the situation and beat DeLuca so badly, he’s going to have a lot of legal consequences to deal with,” he says.

The actor, promoted to series regular last season, hopes to see Andrew taken a bit more seriously by his peers as he looks to figure out his specialty in season 13. Naturally, that could bring him closer to Alex as Grey’s looks to up the drama between the duo.

“He’s a natural in pediatrics, even though he didn’t really like to do it,” Gianniotti says. “Alex and Andrew relate a lot together and last season was building toward DeLuca being inducted into working with pediatrics. With all the things that have happened with DeLuca and Alex and creating a workspace where the two of them are working together, that could be very tense after what’s happened.”