The Grey's Anatomy Role You Forgot Weapons Star Amy Madigan Played

This article contains a discussion of mental health and suicide. Spoilers for "Weapons" ahead.

Even if you've seen all of the marketing for Zach Cregger's (excellent) sophomore solo film "Weapons" — following his solo directorial debut "Barbarian," which released in 2022 — I'd forgive you if you said, "Wait, Amy Madigan is in this?" She sure is! Madigan, a veteran of both the big and small screen (and the stage), plays a very major role in "Weapons," and I'll eventually circle back to her performance ... which is so transformative that my colleague here at /Film, Chris Evangelista, argued that Warner Bros. should submit her for an Oscar nomination. (He's right!) "Weapons" aside, though, Madigan also appeared on a major network drama as a recurring character from 2008 to 2009 — specifically, "Grey's Anatomy," the long-running medical series originally created by Shonda Rhimes.

The show, which centers around Ellen Pompeo's Dr. Meredith Grey (or did until Pompeo exited as a series regular in season 19), has a humongous cast, and people are pretty much constantly joining and leaving the series, even Patrick Dempsey (who played Meredith's one night stand turned husband Dr. Derek Shepherd for 11 seasons). So who does Madigan play? That would be Dr. Katharine Wyatt, a therapist and psychiatrist who works at the hospital, which, at this point in the "Grey's Anatomy" timeline, is called Seattle Grace Hospital. Madigan's Dr. Wyatt first appears in season 4 and sticks around through part of season 6. So what narrative role does she play in the series?

Anyone who's ever watched any given episode of "Grey's Anatomy" knows perfectly well that Meredith Grey is nothing if not stubborn, and after a breakup with Derek Shepherd in season 4, she starts seeing Dr. Katharine Wyatt for therapy sessions to deal with the fact that he's dating someone else. (Derek briefly dates Lauren Stamile's nurse Rose, though he ultimately ends things abruptly because, well, he and Meredith are endgame.) To say Meredith and Dr. Wyatt's sessions don't go well is a massive understatement. Not only does Meredith flat-out refuse to speak for multiple sessions, but she keeps asking Dr. Wyatt for easy answers — especially when she, meaning Meredith, is stressing about Derek being with Rose. Dr. Wyatt, thankfully, offers tough love, making it quite clear that Meredith's stress is unhelpful because she's not doing anything about Derek being with Rose; in fact, Dr. Wyatt essentially calls Meredith a coward for not pursuing the man she loves. This angers Meredith so much that she briefly quits therapy.

The real breakthrough between Dr. Wyatt and Meredith, though, centers around Meredith's late mother, the surgical pioneer Dr. Ellis Grey (Kate Burton). After Meredith ultimately returns to her sessions with Dr. Wyatt, Meredith brings up something devastating — Ellis' attempted suicide. As Meredith recounts to Dr. Wyatt, she was a small child when Ellis slit her wrists in the kitchen of their family home and told Meredith to wait until she was unconscious to call 911 for help; Meredith ignores her mother's command and ultimately saves her life. It's through her work with Dr. Wyatt that Meredith has a deeply unsettling realization, though. Ellis didn't intend to die, but staged her attempt to get the attention of her secret lover, Dr. Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.), who was married during their affair. (Ellis left her husband, Meredith's father, Thatcher — played by Jeff Perry — for Richard, but he didn't leave his wife, Adele, played by Loretta Devine, in return.) 

Dr. Wyatt treats other characters on "Grey's Anatomy" — we see her in sessions with Dr. Erica Hahn (Brooke Smith) and Dr. Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd) — but her most important storyline is with Meredith. With that role in mind, Amy Madigan's role in "Weapons" becomes weirdly more terrifying (somehow).

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Without question, Amy Madigan's character Gladys Lily is the scariest thing in all of "Weapons" — I'm a total wimp when it comes to horror movies, and the early glimpses of Gladys that Zach Cregger's film offers up made me cover my eyes every time. (Even if you're a wuss like me, though, you gotta see "Weapons." It's so good.) Before we properly meet Gladys, we see her in various dreams, and she's so, so scary. "Weapons" is about 17 children vanishing into the night at 2:17 in the morning — all of whom are students in Justine Gandy's (Julia Garner) third-grade class, save for Alex Lily (Cary Christopher), the sole "survivor" of this mysterious event. In the aftermath of this baffling and upsetting occurrence, Justine and the father of one of the missing children, Josh Brolin's Archer Graff, start to experience unsettling dreams. Gladys appears in both of them, providing the movie's two most effective jump scares, but then the film puts her front and center.

In the narrative chapter that centers around the school's principal, Marcus Miller (Benedict Wong), we actually meet Gladys, who claims that she's Alex's aunt but also seems to give away her age by lying and saying that Alex's parents have "consumption," an old-timey term for tuberculosis that immediately catches Marcus' attention. It's then revealed, also in the chapter devoted to Marcus, that Gladys is a sinister witch who possesses people and then steals their life force, which is why she possessed and summoned those 17 children to the basement of the Lily family home in the night. (Alex's parents do not have "consumption," either. She possessed them.) Even though I've spoiled a lot about Gladys here, I'll leave her fate a mystery, so to speak ... but if you've seen "Weapons," you know it's gruesomely satisfying.

This is all to say that Madigan is an outstanding performer who can play a tough but caring therapist and a horrifying and perhaps ancient witch. "Weapons" is in theaters now, and you can stream "Grey's Anatomy" on both Netflix and Hulu.