After joining the long-running medical drama "Grey's Anatomy" at the start of its sixth season, Sarah Drew's trauma attending Dr. April Kepner bid farewell to the fictional Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital (née Seattle Grace Hospital) during the season 14 finale. At the time, Drew seemed happy with her nine-year turn as the timid, anxious intern turned trauma surgeon and U.S. Army veteran. When news broke that she and Jessica Capshaw, who played pediatric surgeon Dr. Arizona Robbins, would both leave
after the season 14 closer "All of Me," Drew was effusive in her praise for the show and its creator, Shonda Rhimes.
"I got to tell stories I believed in. I got to work with [producers] Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers and learn from the best," Drew told The Hollywood Reporter. "I got to work with an incredible community of people that I will have lifelong friendships with [...] It's hard for me to come up with anything I could be angry about."
By 2024, though, Drew was singing a different tune. During an appearance on the "Call It What It Is" podcast (hosted by Capshaw and Camilla Luddington, the latter of whom still plays Dr. Jo Wilson on "Grey's Anatomy") in October of that year, Drew said to Capshaw, "We were unceremoniously let go in a way that felt really mean and unjust. And, because of that, the outpouring of love was so enormous it was like you were sitting there watching people say all the things that they love about you after you're dead."
To be honest, and with all due respect to Drew, April was almost written out of the show twice, so I think, with that considered, she had a pretty good run on the series! Shortly after her arrival in season 6 — she's one of a handful of interns from a competing hospital and residency program, Mercy West, who comes to work at Seattle Grace when the two hospitals merge — April is fired after she forgets to check a woman's airway after a fire, leading to the patient's death.
Then, at the close of season 8, April takes her medical board exams with her colleagues Dr. Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh, who left the series at the end of season 10), Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), Dr. Alex Karev (Justin Chambers, who suddenly and unceremoniously departed in season 16), and Dr. Jackson Avery (Jesse Williams), and April is the only one who doesn't pass. She briefly loses her job again but is ultimately rehired. So what else happens to April on "Grey's Anatomy," and how does her story "end" in season 14?
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April's Ending On Grey's Anatomy Was Perfectly Bittersweet ... And Left The Door Open For Future Appearance
I will say that, out of all the characters on "Grey's Anatomy," April Kepner experiences some of the most growth. When she first gets to Seattle Grace, she's sort of just ... irritating, thanks to her effusively perky attitude combined with her cutthroat need to get ahead. Over time, April — whose Christian faith is an enormous part of her character and who is a virgin as she's choosing to wait until marriage, which will be relevant momentarily — gets a genuinely brilliant character journey courtesy of Shonda Rhimes and her team. Remember those boards that April failed? Well, she's feeling especially frazzled that day after a sudden and impulsive hookup with Dr. Jackson Avery, who, up until that point, was her platonic best friend. April's faith is tested after she breaks what she perceives as her promise to God, but when she embarks on a relationship with paramedic Matthew Taylor (Justin Bruening) and gets engaged to him at the end of season 9, she regards their impending marriage as a second chance ... particularly because Matthew shares her faith, and Jackson does not.
April's plans are, once again, derailed by Jackson when he stands up at her wedding to Matthew in season 10 and declares his love; the two run away together and elope. After Jackson and April argue over their differing beliefs, April finds out she's pregnant with their baby, but when Arizona tells the newlyweds that their baby has a fatal birth defect, they're crushed. Their son Samuel is born and dies only hours after his birth, leaving April despondent — and at the urging of her mentor, trauma surgeon Dr. Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd), she enlists in the Army as a surgeon and deploys to Jordan.
This decision causes the final fracture between April and Jackson, and when she returns, they sign divorce papers ... only for April to discover that she's pregnant again as a result of a tryst with Jackson. The two remain separated but end up raising their daughter, Harriet, together, and though April faces a crisis of faith in season 14 after losing multiple patients, she finds love with Matthew again and marries him, leaving what's now named Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital to provide medical care to the unhoused population of Seattle. So how does April come back? It all centers on Jackson, actually.
Sarah Drew's Dr. April Kepner Did Eventually Return To Grey's Anatomy — Two Times, Actually
Halfway through season 17 of "Grey's Anatomy," Jackson, wondering what's next in his career, decides to move from Seattle to Boston to run the Catherine Fox Foundation, an organization named for Jackson's mother (played onscreen by Debbie Allen) that promotes equity in medicine. Before he does, he stops in to see April and Harriet, and as it happens, April and Matthew are now separated; she agrees to move to Boston so the family can stay together, and the two ride off into the proverbial sunset, suggesting a romantic reunion.,
When the two reappear once again in season 18, it's for the season finale, which happens to be the landmark 400th episode of the entire series; this time, April and Jackson visit Seattle together, and it's clear that they're back together romantically. When Sarah Drew spoke to Entertainment Weekly about coming back for this particular episode in 2022, interviewer Samantha Highfill asked if it was hard to step back into April's scrubs. Drew said she thinks her character is always evolving — because she, too, is evolving — but that her connection with Jesse Williams helped her find the rhythm. "But then the relationship between her and Jackson last year, we slipped back into that seamlessly, as if no time had passed at all," Drew said. "But that has a lot to do with Jesse and my relationship and our partnership." She continued:
"So, I find her to be a calmer and more grounded and a more grown-up version of April now than she was four years ago. And it's fun to just let her be that, because that's who I am. I've grown a lot in the last four years. So I wasn't trying to recreate some version of her. I was just letting her grow with me, which is what I've always done and is what I did for the nine years I was on the show. She changed as I changed. It just happened that way."
In that same interview, Drew spoke to April's rocky but ultimately satisfying evolution throughout the entire series. "It's crazy. She changes so much. She grows and blossoms and goes through so many ups and downs and deals with pain and trauma and comes out fighting on the other side," Drew remarked. "She went through the ringer and went through a lot of joy as well. And it's really, really fun to play her. She's just so fun."
Drew also noted that she'll never rule out coming back to "Grey's Anatomy," specifically saying that she's "never closed the door on that family," so who knows? Maybe we'll see April in action again. In the meantime, you can stream "Grey's Anatomy" on Netflix and Hulu now.
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