#Japril forever! Dr. Jackson Avery (Jesse Williams) and Dr. April Kepner (Sarah Drew) were one of the most beloved couples on Grey’s Anatomy, and it’s time for a walk down memory lane as Jackson exits the show.
Jackson and April joined the ABC drama in 2009 when Seattle Grace Hospital merged with Mercy West. April was a Christian farm girl from the Midwest while Jackson was secretly the super-rich grandson of Harper Avery, whose foundation gave the most prestigious awards in medicine. Despite their opposite backgrounds, April and Jackson developed a great friendship.
The night before their boards exams season 8, April lost her virginity to Jackson, which gave their romance a bumpy start. The religious doctor had previously been saving herself for marriage.
After a pregnancy scare, the two broke up and started seeing other people. April even nearly married her paramedic boyfriend, Matthew (Justin Bruening), until Jackson stopped the wedding.
“I love you April. I always have. Even the things I don’t like, I love. I want you with me,” he said as April and Matthew were at the altar.
The two ran away from the wedding together and eloped that day. The spontaneous marriage seemed to turn sour when it becomes clear that Jackson is a dedicated atheist and April is still a devout Christian. April’s pregnancy brought them together, but the death of their son, Samuel, who only lived hours after his premature birth, tore them apart.
April took a job as a trauma surgeon in the army to cope with the loss, and when she returned, it was clear that their marriage was falling apart. They divorced, only to realize that April was pregnant. She gave birth to Harriet, and while their coparenting went well, they never reunited.
Once again, April got married on a whim, but this time it was to Matthew, the guy she left at the altar years earlier. She left the hospital to do nonprofit work with her new husband, which served as April’s big send-off as Drew was written out of Grey’s in 2018.
However, the Christian doctor came back for a short 2021 arc to help Jackson say goodbye to Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital. Jackson realized that he wants to create real change in the healthcare system, making racial equity a priority, and that meant taking over his family’s foundation in Boston.
He went to April and asked her to move her family to Boston with him, and that was when April revealed that she didn’t have to run anything by Matthew because they split. She believed in Jackson’s vision for the Katherine Fox Foundation (f.k.a. the Harper Avery Foundation), and she agreed to move across the country with her ex-husband.
It sounds like Jackson and April’s Boston adventure could be a whole new Grey’s Anatomy spinoff, and Drew, 40, told reporters that she’s ready to sign on.
“Yes! I mean, you guys, how cool would that show be?” the April actress said in May 2021 following her return to the ABC series. “I gotta be honest. I’ve been on Twitter and Japril was, I think, trending worldwide all day. … How amazing and needed is a show about racial justice in the medical field and inequity and equality. How amazing would that be?”
A spinoff is not confirmed, so for now, Japril fans will have to settle for scrolling through the sweetest moments of Jackson and April’s story on Grey’s Anatomy:
