When you ask a Gilmore Girls fan what the show's biggest mistake was, or what the worst storyline was, you will hear some variation of the following: Lorelai getting married to Christopher, Rory leaving Yale and fighting with Lorelai, Rory sleeping with Dean when he was still married, the entire final season, or the reveal that Luke had a secret daughter he never knew existed.
Those are all valid complaints to lodge against the series, so much so that any time Lauren Graham is asked about Lorelai and Christopher getting married, she hardly remembers that happening. But I think if we polled the whole of the fandom, the consensus would be that the Gilmore Girls moment that drives us collectively crazy the most is the introduction of April Nardini.
I remember where I was when I learned about April. I was in middle school and a friend knew someone who knew someone who worked at Warner Bros. A script leak revealed Luke had a daughter, gossip that was shared with me during passing period before geography class. My world was turned upside and was confirmed so weeks later when on TV, lo and behold, Luke had a daughter.
That was 20 years ago.
We met April on Gilmore Girls 20 years ago
April was introduced back in November 2005 in Gilmore Girls season 6 episode 9, aptly titled "The Prodigal Daughter Returns" for two reasons. Not only was the episode the glorious and long-awaited conclusion of Lorelai and Rory's feud (the prodigal daughter returning), but Luke also had a prodigal daughter of his own returning for the very first time. Oh, if she'd never waltzed into Luke's for that science project...
Over the years, April the character and her portrayer, actress Vanessa Marano, have received an undue amount of hate. This conversation we're having right now isn't that. Marano was doing a job, and she was doing it expertly. She did everything she needed to do as April, a character who would have been precocious and beloved if it hadn't been for the choices made about her storyline.
For starters, Luke opted not to open up to Lorelai, who has was engaged to be married to, about the discovery that he has a tween daughter whose existence he didn't know about. (Let's not even discuss April's mom, Anna...) Instead, he kept April a secret from Lorelai for much longer than he should have, and when Lorelai ultimately found out — not from him, mind you! — she was hurt but remained supportive.
As a single mother herself, she tried to be understanding and give Luke the space he needed with this new relationship. But that understanding often went one way and turned Luke very insular, pushing Lorelai away when he should have been letting her in. As we all know, their disagreements over this very situation led to Lorelai's ultimatum, their wedding being called off, and... well, you know the rest.
I would never go as far as to say that the inclusion of Luke's secret daughter "ruined" Gilmore Girls. That's dramatic. It's my favorite show, and nothing has ever or could ruin it for me. I've even found a way to love the Amy Sherman-Palladino-less season 7. But it's hard not to recognize how the April storyline marked a noticeable decline in the show's storytelling.
Maybe it started earlier, when Rory got arrested with Logan, decided to drop out of Yale, and moved in with Richard and Emily. Maybe that's when Gilmore Girls wrote itself into a corner that it struggled to write itself out of until the series finale (which I stand by being an amazing series finale, by the way). Still, the handling of the April twist was a huge mistake for an otherwise whip-smart series.
Marano later reprised her role as April in the Netflix miniseries revival Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, again much to the agitation of fans. Eleven years after her introduction in the series, April's tightly wound and takes to smoking pot as she worries about her future in graduate school. Her appearance was quick but enough to ruffle the feathers of those who didn't quite gel with her the first go around.
No matter where you stand with April Nardini in the past, or the most recent past, I think we can all agree that it's wild that 20 years will have passed this November since the wildest Gilmore Girls plot twist rocked our world. We should all be thankful that "The Prodigal Daughter Returns" got our girls back together, but that episode was just the beginning of a maddening mistake.
Watch Gilmore Girls on Netflix and Hulu. Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life streams exclusively on Netflix.