37 Characters With the Best Last Words in TV History
By Erin Qualey
Mark Sloan – Grey’s Anatomy
Last Words: “If you love someone, you tell them. Even if you’re scared that it’s not the right thing. Even if you’re scared that it’ll cause problems. Even if you’re scared that it will burn your life to the ground, you say it, and you say it loud and you go from there.”
How He Died: Complications from plane crash leads to coma, taken off of life support after 30 days of no improvement.
Why His Last Words Were So Great: This gets tricky because these aren’t technically Mark’s last words. His last words are actually to Webber as he dictates his will. But this is the last time Jackson and Avery talk. Sure, there’s a bit of a goodbye while everyone tries to convince themselves that Mark waking up isn’t “the surge.” But for our purposes this is Mark’s last moment and from the man who would walk around saying, “It’s a beautiful day to save lives” he wouldn’t want his last moments remembered any other way.
Mark’s advice to Jackson not only stays with him, but pervades over the entire series. Sloan taught Jackson everything he knew, and in his last moments his advice has nothing to do with being a doctor but living a good life. It comes from a place of doing just the opposite. But it propels others throughout the show to do the same, because Jackson often repeats Sloan’s words when it’s appropriate. These words keep Mark alive.