Some things in life are easy. Rewatching Grey’s Anatomy is one of them. Turning on an old episode and falling back into the rhythms of Seattle Grace, the familiar chaos of the OR, and the drama in the hospital hallways all goes down smoothly every time. Or at least, it used to. This week, it got a little harder. Eric Dane passed away on Feb. 19, 2026, at 53, after a battle with ALS, and he left behind a body of work that a lot of people are revisiting right now.
Most people knew Dane first as Dr. Mark Sloan, the tall, magnetic plastic surgeon who walked into Seattle Grace in 2006. The nickname McSteamy arrived not much later, and it stuck. Dane once admitted that he could count on one hand the number of times he’d actually said the name aloud, but we’ve all said it countless times. It’s hard to argue with that. Dane’s performance was funny, warm, and fierce, turning what could have been a smirking side character into one of the most beloved Grey’s Anatomy characters. When the show renamed its hospital Grey Sloan Memorial in his honor, fans connected with that tribute.
Beyond Grey’s Anatomy, Dane built a career that proved he had more range than primetime gave him credit for. In The Last Ship, he gave a grittier performance as a Navy commander. On Euphoria, he stripped away every ounce of charm to play the haunted, deeply complicated Cal Jacobs and delivered a performance that floored everyone who watched it. His career was compelling and textured, including roles in X-Men: The Last Stand, Burlesque, and Charmed. However, Grey’s Anatomy is where Eric Dane will always live on. This list of his 10 best episodes hits different now.
“Song Beneath the Song” (Season 7, Episode 18)
In “Song Beneath the Song,” a car accident brings a very pregnant Callie Torres into Seattle Grace under terrifying circumstances. She’s barely hanging on, and the doctors trying to save her are the same people who love her most. As she undergoes surgery, the episode unfolds inside her subconscious, expressed through musicals as she imagines her colleagues performing songs like ‘Chasing Cars’ and ‘How to Save a Life.’
Arizona is devastated. Mark is beside himself. The baby is in danger. The episode is emotional and unhinged in the best possible way. However, Mark doesn’t sing in this one. While the episode leans heavily into Callie and Arizona’s relationship, Dane’s scenes have a desperation that grounds the episode’s wilder impulses. The musical format could have felt distant and theatrical, but his performance kept it grounded.
“Death and All His Friends” (Season 6, Episode 24)
“Death and All His Friends” marks the second half of one of the most brutal Grey’s Anatomy season finales. Gary Clark, the widower who blames Seattle Grace for his wife’s death, is at the hospital with a gun, and by the time this episode picks up from the previous one, “Sanctuary,” the damage is done. Cristina is forced to operate on Derek at gunpoint. Owen talks a shooter down. Meredith loses a pregnancy she didn’t even know she wanted.
The episode’s pacing is suffocating. After everything that takes place in this two-part story, it’s easy to forget that Mark Sloan spends a significant portion of “Death and All His Friends” bleeding out from a gunshot wound sustained in “Sanctuary.” Dane didn’t have the showiest material here, but the weight of his presence is felt throughout. When Lexie refuses to leave Mark’s side, we’re reminded of one of the show’s most important relationships.
“Sanctuary” (Season 6, Episode 23)
Before the chaos reaches its peak, “Sanctuary” is the episode where everything starts breaking. Gary Clark arrives at Seattle Grace, and no one is sure what they’re dealing with. The tension builds in increments: a gunshot here, a lockdown there, and then it spreads. Gary shoots Reed in the hallway without warning. He then shoots Alex, who is left for dead. Then, Gary shoots Derek on the catwalk. The episode is constructed like a thriller, and each scene turns the corridors of the hospital into something menacing.
Mark Sloan is also shot in this Grey’s Anatomy episode, and the scene is jarring because of how suddenly it happens. There’s no dramatic buildup for him and no moment of confrontation. He’s there, and then he’s on the floor, which feels honest and raw. “Sanctuary” is one of the best episodes because it’s not cinematic about violence. Dane’s performance was so impressive because he spent most of his screen time in physical distress.
“Dream a Little Dream of Me” (Season 5, Episode 1)
The Season 5 premiere, “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” opens with a dream sequence. Meredith, Cristina, Izzie, and other characters drift through sequences that blur the line between what the characters want and what they’re afraid of. The entire time, real life at Seattle Grace continues as usual. Meredith and Derek are navigating the next step of their relationship, and Cristina is unraveling. However, Mark Sloan’s thread is woven throughout the episode. He’s been carrying something heavy during the summer break, and it’s written all over him.
The episode is loose and atmospheric by Grey’s Anatomy’s standards, but it works. It’s significant for Mark because now we know he’s in love with Lexie Grey, but he doesn’t quite understand what to do with that yet. Dane played this storyline with a lightness that kept the big reveal from feeling intense. It’s funny, and even a little bit embarrassing. While he was a charming disruption in Season 3 and had complicated history in Season 4, Mark Sloan becomes a person in this episode.
“Desire” (Season 3, Episode 21)
In Grey’s Anatomy Season 3, Seattle Grace buzzes with personal and professional tension, with romantic entanglements spilling into the operating rooms. Mark Sloan is at the center of it all. He’s pursuing Callie, who is with George, and the whole thing is messy and uncomfortable in a way that early Grey’s Anatomy did so well. Meanwhile, Izzie is making questionable choices, and there’s ongoing tension between Meredith and Derek.
Nobody is entirely right, nobody is entirely wrong, and the episode doesn’t try to sort that out for you. While other episodes skip over the loneliness underneath Sloan’s confidence, this episode captures it perfectly. He wants things he hasn’t earned, and he knows it, and Dane played that self-awareness at just the right volume. This is also the episode that fleshes out the Callie and Mark dynamic, and we know how it becomes one of the most essential Grey’s Anatomy friendships.
“Hook, Line and Sinner” (Season 6, Episode 20)
Mark and Lexie have been circling each other for several seasons by this point, and “Hook, Line and Sinner” is the Grey’s Anatomy episode where that tension snaps. When Mark learns that Sloan Riley, the daughter he didn’t know he had, is pregnant and planning to give the baby up for adoption, his life takes an abrupt turn. He grapples with the weight of unexpected fatherhood, first to an adult child, then to a grandchild.
His interactions are halting and unsure, and they’re marked by vulnerability as he tries and fails to say the right thing. The plot also involves a fisherman who arrives at Seattle Grace with a hook lodged in an unfortunate location, which gives the episode a comedic energy and balances out the other emotional storyline. But the episode lets the comedy and the emotion coexist without one overshadowing the other.
“Going, Going, Gone” (Season 9, Episode 1)
The Grey’s Anatomy Season 9 premiere, “Going, Going, Gon,e” opens with the aftermath of the plane crash that killed Lexie. Now, Mark is dying, and Seattle Grace has changed in ways that feel both inevitable and wrong. There are new faces, new dynamics, and grief that no one has processed yet. Meredith is holding everything together with the exhaustion of someone who has survived too much.
And Mark Sloan is in a coma, still technically alive, which is somehow harder. Mark’s storyline in this episode is handled with real care. The show keeps him present even as it’s preparing to let him go, and the scenes around his bedside are devastating. The decision to spend the premiere in this in-between space, where Mark is neither here nor gone, was a narratively bold choice. It respected both the character and the audience by treating loss as a process.
“Remember the Time” (Season 9, Episode 2)
Grey’s Anatomy Season 9, Episode 2, “Remember the Time” does something truly difficult by going back in time. Through a series of flashbacks, it fills in the five weeks between the plane crash and the present day, showing what happened in the woods, what the survivors endured, and what was lost along the way.
This was a particularly raw Grey’s Anatomy moment, and Eric Dane handled some of the heaviest material of his entire time on the series. He’s exceptional in this episode. It’s genuinely moving to watch the scene in the woods when Mark holds Lexie as she dies. The episode also understands that skipping the crash and jumping to the aftermath would have robbed the audience of the chance of experiencing the full weight of Mark Sloan’s loss. It’s not an easy watch, but it gave Dane a proper farewell scene to play, and he did it beautifully.
“Flight” (Season 8, Episode 24)
It only makes sense to include “Flight” on the list. The plane is already down when the episode begins, and there’s smoke in the woods somewhere between Seattle and Boise, where the team was headed to help separate conjoined twins. Meredith has a piece of metal in her leg. Cristina has dislocated her shoulder. Derek is missing and is eventually found with a hand so badly injured that it threatens everything he is as a surgeon. Arizona has an open femur fracture. And Lexie is trapped under a large piece of the plane.
Mark finds her. He holds her hand. He tells her he loves her, that he’s always loved her, that they were supposed to end up together. And she dies there, in the woods, while he’s still talking. Back at the hospital, nobody knows that this has happened. There is a reason 11.44 million viewers watched this episode when it aired, with reviews specifically singling out Eric Dane’s performance alongside Ellen Pompeo and Chyler Leigh’s. The scene where Mark finds Lexie is gut-wrenching, and Dane played it so well. Shonda Rhimes later said the finale was even more painful to write than the Season 6 shooting, which isn’t surprising to anyone who has seen it.
“Yesterday” (Season 2, Episode 18)
This is where it all begins. A stranger approaches Meredith at the nurses’ station, reads a patient’s chart, and flirts with her confidently and casually, immediately telling us who this person is. Within five minutes, Derek Shepherd punches him in the face, and Meredith finally hears a name to go with the mythology she’s already heard. That’s Mark Sloan.
In the pilot episode of one of the best medical dramas, a teenager has craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, a condition that caused his bones to grow in ways that reshaped his face. Mark is brought in for his surgical expertise on this high-risk procedure. The kid doesn’t survive.
Mark performs the reconstructive surgery, postmortem, because the kid had wanted it his whole life. The real reason Mark comes to Seattle, however, is to see Addison, whom he loves. The nickname McSteamy comes from this episode. Meredith, Cristina, and Izzie workshop it in the hallway, land on it, and the rest is history.
Casting director Linda Lowy has said that Dane was originally brought in for this single episode, and that after it aired, the response was so overwhelming that it was impossible not to make him a series regular. Watching “Yesterday” now, that’s completely understandable. In one episode, without any of the backstory, Dane establishes everything that Mark Sloan is. We get the charm, the ego, the surgical gift, and the loneliness inside him. It’s his first episode, and it made seven more seasons feel inevitable.
Mark Sloan fans, the comments section belongs to you today. Which of these Grey’s Anatomy episodes are you going to watch tonight?
- Release Date
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March 27, 2005
- Network
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ABC
- Directors
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Rob Corn, Kevin McKidd, Debbie Allen, Chandra Wilson, Allison Liddi-Brown, Jeannot Szwarc, Tony Phelan
- Writers
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Shonda Rhimes, Julie Wong, Jen Klein, Tameson Duffy, Meg Marinis
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
