From the writers of Grey's Anatomy:
Which brings me to Owen and Cristina. Owen clearly has a lot of damage. He’s seen a lot and been changed by all the trauma he’s lived through. He is not the same man he was before. And Beth (his ex fiancée) wants to believe he can be that man. She wants to believe that if he comes home they can go back to the way they were. As for Cristina, even though she believes that Owen is dark and damaged, she’s not looking away. And the fact that she sees him, really sees him, is like a lifeline to him.
We have spoken to several war veterans about what it’s like to come back. It’s really important to us that we get this right, that we don’t shy away from the difficulty people have who come back from war. And part of that difficulty is that people who knew them still think of them as the person they were before they left even though fundamentally they may have changed. And this episode is where Owen’s past comes back to smack him in the face and really make him see how much he’s changed.
