Sarah Drew will be leaving Grey’s Anatomy at the end of season 14, and that means that Japril fans have some big adjustments coming.
I’m not going to sugarcoat it, when I read the news of Sarah Drew’s exit from Grey’s Anatomy I was absolutely crushed. Not just for the loss of April, but also because that means the loss of any future between April and Jackson. Like many Japril shippers, I’ve been convinced that the pair are on a longer storyline of being separated only to eventually find their way back to each other.
The news of April’s character being written out, of course, means that Japril won’t have that chance to make things up. Which feels like a big blow to fans and to the show overall. They are, after all, the last great love story on the series. And the Japril centric episodes have been some of the best on the show in recent years.
While I can appreciate that the show is trying to freshen things up, and basically reboot themselves, it seems like a great opportunity is being passed by to make way for storylines that will be less fulfilling.
With that said, I do have some hopes for what will happen since fans have no choice in saying goodbye. Series usually either go two ways when writing a character off of a show. They either die or if they’re lucky the character will just move away. Of course, my preference is that April will just move away, maybe go back to serve the military since that seemed to help her in the past. This, at least means that there’s always the chance that she could re-join the show down the line even if it was just for guest arcs.
I don’t think that fans could bear to see April or Arizona killed off from the series, given how meaningful they both are to the series. With Grey’s Anatomy trying to get back to their romantic comedy roots, I hope that means that they’ll be more hesitant to kill any characters off.
What I’m really unsure of though, is how this will be pulled off without April and Jackson being on bad terms. As a mother, I just can’t see a path in which April will want to leave without Harriett. Perhaps the only way would be if she left to serve overseas and worried about her safety. But after losing her first child, I can’t see April wanting to separate from Harriett long term. At the same time, I doubt Jackson will want to be away from his daughter either.
So if April does move away, and brings their daughter, Jackson will naturally be heartbroken. I can only imagine that it will create more tension between them and possibly even legal trouble again. If I can’t see these two together, I at least want to see them being friends. After all, what makes them so amazing is that they were each other’s best friends before they became a couple.
I want to see April go out with happy feelings, not bad ones, and so I’m worried to see how everything with Jackson is handled. For some reason if Jackson was kind enough to accommodate whatever April is going through that makes her leave, I could see them ending things on good terms. But I really doubt that will happen either.
I’m also worried for what April’s exit will mean for the Jackson and Maggie storyline. I had kept hoping that the writers would drop that, and we could move on and pretend that it never happened. This whole thing where it’s awkward because they’re kind of like brother and sister now but not really is just creepy, not sexy. Not to mention that I’ve never felt an ounce of chemistry between the two characters. Even if you put the weird family situation aside, it doesn’t like these two mesh well together.
With April leaving though, the writers will have all the more reason to keep Maggie and Jackson on this path towards becoming a couple. Which I really do not want, and I don’t think that I’m in the minority with the fandom either.
To be realistic, it’s going to be extremely difficult for fans to accept Jackson having a good love story with anyone other than April. This really speaks to how well of a job they did making us fall in love with April and Jackson as a couple. But it also makes it harder on them to find a suitable partner for Jackson that isn’t April.
By the time that Derek was written off of Grey’s Anatomy, I was happy to see Meredith be free of him. At that point in time he’d just become extremely selfish and really wasn’t letting Meredith shine. I was so excited to see where she could go without the weight of her relationship weighing her down.
And it’s not like that at all with April and Jackson. These two clearly still care about each other deeply. Maybe more so on April’s side, even though she doesn’t like to admit it, but Jackson is obviously still very connected to her as well.
It may be a situation where Jackson doesn’t realize how good he had it with April until she leaves, but I’m not sure that fits in with the overall theme the Grey’s Anatomy writers have been going for lately. I’m just heartbroken at the concept that Jackson and April won’t get the happily ever after that they deserve. My only consolation is that maybe down the line we’ll get to catch up with April and she will have found someone even better for her than Jackson. She’s been a great character to watch grow on the series and it won’t be the same without her.