Ellen Pompeo’s absence from the Grey's Anatomy season 23 cast photo sharpened attention on Benson Kwan, the resident fired after secretly giving Quinn Durston an experimental treatment without FDA approval. The move leaves Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital with one of its sharpest unresolved character turns heading into a season that is already leaning on later-generation doctors.
Benson first appeared in 2022, and Harry Shum Jr.’s character has been written with a thorny edge that hid past trauma. That setup has long invited comparisons to season 1 Alex Karev, played by Justin Chambers, and it is why his possible return carries more weight than a routine cast shake-up.
Quinn Durston’s case
Quinn Durston, played by Michael Weston, is a single father dealing with stage four liver cancer. His symptoms worsened after the FDA denied his request for experimental treatment, and Benson decided to go rogue by injecting him anyway. That choice put the patient’s case at the center of the season 23 discussion, because it tied a disciplinary firing to a medical judgment call rather than a simple behavior problem.
Quinn was later discharged from the hospital and was reportedly doing well. That outcome complicates the firing: Benson broke the rules, but the patient’s immediate condition did not collapse the way the punishment alone would suggest. For viewers, the practical question is not whether the violation happened — it did — but whether Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital treats it as a permanent exit or the opening move in a redemption arc.
Harry Shum Jr. and Alex Karev
Harry Shum Jr.’s Benson has been one of the cleaner structural bets in a series that has lost almost every original character to death, retirement, or being off the grid. As Grey's Anatomy approaches season 23, the show is expected to rely mostly on later generations of interns, surgical residents, and side characters, so a reinstated Benson would immediately change the balance of the cast and the hospital’s resident bench.
Justin Chambers’ Alex Karev comparison matters because it points to a familiar Grey's Anatomy pattern: a difficult doctor whose rough edges mask deeper damage, then gets judged by the mess he makes before he earns any soft landing. Benson’s turn has that same DNA, but season 23 will need to decide whether the illegal treatment is treated as a final breach or as the kind of mistake this show often uses to force a character into a sharper version of himself.
Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital
Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital now sits on the cleanest possible suspense point: whether Benson Kwan returns. If he does, the show gets a ready-made redemption story with a patient who improved after the violation; if he does not, the firing becomes a hard exit with no on-screen repair. Either way, season 23 starts with a resident whose worst decision also left behind the strongest argument for bringing him back.
