A Controversial Topic that Shouldn’t be

In Episode 5, Jo and Link have a disagreement over baptizing the twins after Link reveals that his mother has been badgering them about it for weeks.

While Jo is surprisingly in favor of it, Link, on the other hand, is strongly against the idea. For him, anything tied to religion brings back painful memories of his childhood in the cancer ward, when a church group would visit him and the other sick kids and tell them that God was going to help them. He watched friends die around him every week. To him, it felt hypocritical and deeply unfair. If God existed, why would He let children suffer? And looking at the world now — children starving, wars escalating, the planet burning — he cannot reconcile faith with what he sees around him.

That’s why Link is shocked to discover that Jo would even consider baptism. He didn’t even know she believed in God. The entire episode becomes a quiet exploration of how they try to understand each other’s point of view — and we’ll soon find out that this conversation was actually foreshadowing Jo’s future storyline, one that will surely test Link’s beliefs in profound ways.

While I was pleasantly surprised by this arc (even if I would have preferred to see them connect intimately rather than argue), it clearly divided the fandom. Some said it felt random to portray Jo as “suddenly religious.” Others argued it came out of nowhere or felt out of character. Others insisted that Jo had never shown any sign of faith before, so this must be a writing mistake.

While everyone is entitled to their opinion — especially when it comes to religion — I think a lot of people have missed the point of this storyline entirely.

That’s why I wanted to write this article: to offer some nuance, add emotional context, and explain why Jo’s relationship to faith makes perfect sense both narratively and psychologically. Again. In my opinion.In Episode 5, Jo and Link have a disagreement over baptizing the twins after Link reveals that his mother has been badgering them about it for weeks.

While Jo is surprisingly in favor of it, Link, on the other hand, is strongly against the idea. For him, anything tied to religion brings back painful memories of his childhood in the cancer ward, when a church group would visit him and the other sick kids and tell them that God was going to help them. He watched friends die around him every week. To him, it felt hypocritical and deeply unfair. If God existed, why would He let children suffer? And looking at the world now — children starving, wars escalating, the planet burning — he cannot reconcile faith with what he sees around him.

That’s why Link is shocked to discover that Jo would even consider baptism. He didn’t even know she believed in God. The entire episode becomes a quiet exploration of how they try to understand each other’s point of view — and we’ll soon find out that this conversation was actually foreshadowing Jo’s future storyline, one that will surely test Link’s beliefs in profound ways.

While I was pleasantly surprised by this arc (even if I would have preferred to see them connect intimately rather than argue), it clearly divided the fandom. Some said it felt random to portray Jo as “suddenly religious.” Others argued it came out of nowhere or felt out of character. Others insisted that Jo had never shown any sign of faith before, so this must be a writing mistake.

While everyone is entitled to their opinion — especially when it comes to religion — I think a lot of people have missed the point of this storyline entirely.

That’s why I wanted to write this article: to offer some nuance, add emotional context, and explain why Jo’s relationship to faith makes perfect sense both narratively and psychologically. Again. In my opinion.

A Life Built on Survival

Jo has never been religious — but that doesn’t mean she’s incapable of faith.

To understand why Jo’s openness to faith in Episode 5 makes sense, we first have to look at who she has been her entire life. Jo has never been portrayed as a religious person. She didn’t grow up with rituals, traditions, or a sense of spiritual belonging. What she grew up with was instability — a childhood marked by abandonment, loneliness, and constant survival.

But what we learn in Episode 5 is that when Jo was a child living in her car, she found temporary comfort in a local Korean church that gave her free meals. She would peek in at the youth groups or senior bible study groups and longed for that sense of community. It wasn’t a home, but it was safe. It wasn’t a belief system, but it was warm. For a child who had nothing, that mattered. Those memories, however distant, remain imprinted somewhere deep inside her.

As an adult, Jo never showed any interest in religion nor did she practice it. She built herself from scratch and excelled in med school. She picked herself up time and time again after suffering trauma — domestic violence, discovering she was the product of rape, being abandoned by the second husband she thought would stay and save her. Her strength has always come from within — her resilience, her intelligence, her emotional growth. Nothing in her storyline before episode 5 suggested that she was secretly religious. Because she wasn’t, really.

But here’s the key: Jo has always been someone who searches for meaning when life becomes unbearable.
Not in doctrine, not in rules, but in connection. With people, with hope, with love.

It’s also worth noting that this search for meaning has surfaced before in quieter ways. Back in Season 21, Jo asked Levi to be her babies’ godfather — a choice that suggested she wasn’t entirely estranged from the idea of ritual or symbolic roles. Faith may never have been central to her life, but it clearly existed somewhere in the background, long before Season 22.

Which is exactly why the next part of her journey makes emotional sense… even if it surprised the audience.

The Explosive Catalyst — Nearly Losing Link

What many fans misinterpret as “sudden faith” is in reality something far more human. In the Season 22 premiere, Jo was left alone with the terror of not knowing whether Link would survive. She thought she was losing her husband — just 36 hours after marrying him, just after discovering they were expecting twin girls. In that moment, Jo did not reach for religion. She reached for anything that could keep her from drowning in terror.

So she prayed. Not because she believed, but because she was desperate. Prayer was never about doctrine; it was about survival. She did not find God. She found hope. A lifeline.
A way to stay afloat in a moment where she had no control.

From a psychological perspective, Jo’s reaction is not random but profoundly logical. Overwhelmed by fear and stripped of control, she reached for the most universal coping strategy available to her in that moment: prayer.

One source of misunderstanding is that the show didn’t really explore Jo’s emotional trauma after the explosion. What she went through was hard. Almost unbearable. But viewers never really saw her fear, her panic, or the collapse that followed — which would have clarified why prayer became an instinctive refuge.

Also, trauma has a way of pulling old memories back to the surface — not consciously, but instinctively. For Jo, that church from her childhood, the one safe place she had ever known during her darkest years, returned to her mind.

Jo’s relationship to faith was born from fear, not religion. From love and hope, not belief. And from the unbearable truth that she could not save the person she loved most.

Faith vs Religion — What Jo Is Actually Seeking

Much of the backlash to this storyline stems from a misunderstanding. What Jo is experiencing is not a sudden conversion. She is not joining a church, adopting a doctrine, or claiming to find God. She is not “becoming religious.” She is simply someone who reached for comfort in a moment of intense trauma.

It’s also important to distinguish between finding faith and turning to prayer. Finding faith can happen at many points in life — often slowly, often in moments of hardship, as people search for meaning when circumstances become overwhelming. It isn’t fixed; it can shift, evolve, and take many forms over time.

Turning to prayer, however, doesn’t necessarily require faith. People pray in hospitals, in ambulances, in waiting rooms. They pray when they have no one else, nowhere else, and nothing else left. It’s not a declaration of belief — it’s an instinctive attempt to hold on.

This distinction matters.

But in Jo’s case, I think what we call “faith” may have always existed — just without a label attached to it.
Jo’s faith is emotional, not ideological.
It is a coping mechanism, not a creed.
Desperation, not devotion.

And once you understand this, the storyline becomes far more poignant — and far more realistic. She is about to have twins, which also forces her to think about what she wants for her daughters, after she herself lived an immense trauma.

The Influence of Maureen and How Motherhood Changes Her Priorities

Maureen’s presence in Jo’s life adds another layer of emotional truth to this arc. Following Jo and Link’s wedding, we sensed that Jo and Maureen’s relationship was on a good path, after reconciling following the wedding day conflict. Maureen is the only mother figure Jo has.

And as Link was in recovery, it has been implied that Maureen and Eric were supporting the family and helping with the kids. Even though we didn’t see it on screen, it’s easy to imagine their bond strengthening during such a difficult period. Plus, Jo would have mentioned it if her mother-in-law had been driving her crazy.

So when Maureen brings up baptism, Jo doesn’t hear doctrine. She hears protection. Tradition. Family. She hears the possibility of giving her daughters something she never received — a sense of belonging and community. If Maureen hadn’t brought it up, Jo might never have considered it. But coming from her, as the only mother figure that she has, the idea carried emotional weight. It simply gives her permission to imagine a different, more grounded start for her daughters than the one she had herself. She wants her children to have something to believe in if life becomes hard. Something that might comfort them the way prayer comforted her when Link’s life was on the line.

She is looking for meaning — a ritual that symbolizes safety. A way to protect her children in a world that feels terrifyingly unstable. Becoming a parent always forces you to revisit certain beliefs, to question what you want to pass on, and to redefine your priorities.

Why This Arc Is Beautifully Written and How it Strengthens Jo and Link’s Story

Grey’s Anatomy handled this storyline with surprising subtlety. She admits that prayer helped her, and she does so in a moment of complete vulnerability. Camilla Luddington plays it with such restraint and honesty that it feels entirely human, simple, and grounded. It adds nuance to Jo’s character rather than contradicting it. It deepens her emotional world rather than rewriting it.

That storyline also served to help Jo and Link project themselves into parenthood again and brought the twins back to the center of the conversation, paving the way for the next episode.

Episode 5 gives Jo and Link something rare for a couple often portrayed as perfect: a genuine, meaningful disagreement. It allows them to explore uncomfortable parts of their pasts. It exposes fears, wounds, and memories they had never shared before. And even through conflict, it adds intimacy — because emotional honesty is intimate. It’s also the first time Jo acknowledges the emotional consequences of the explosion.

Jo’s fragile relationship with faith doesn’t distance her from Link. It brings them into a deeper, more authentic space. Misunderstandings often come from expecting extremes. Fans sometimes assume that faith automatically equals religion, and that religion automatically implies character transformation. But Jo is not suddenly religious. She is not preaching. She is not joining a church. She is not abandoning who she is. She is simply revisiting her beliefs as she prepares to welcome twins into the world and as she recovers from a traumatic experience.

As A Conclusion: Why This Storyline Made Perfect Sense

Jo is a survivor who reached for hope when her world was collapsing. Her relationship to faith reflects love, fear, motherhood, and desperation — not doctrine. It is not random, not forced, not out of character. It is profoundly human.

It is about a woman trying to protect her family and stay afloat in the darkest moment of her life.

And now, in the promo for the midseason premiere (Episode 7), we see Link sitting in the hospital chapel, seemingly praying — praying for his wife and twins to make it. A beautiful parallel, and an ironic reminder that faith can find us precisely when we think we don’t believe in anything anymore.