Haha, yes, that cliffhanger! They really did pile EVERYTHING on her in that finale and I do very much hope we get at least one more season to round off all these major revelations and storylines.
April’s not wrong, tbh, Sterling had been leading a CHARMED ass life until this point. When you compare them, Sterling’s got a twin sister she really gets along with, kind parents, a loving bf, everyone seems to like her no matter what, she does well academically, while April’s stuck there already being an intense and competitive kid and just made worse by the realization she’s gay and the wall she’d had to put up because of that. She has no real friends, just lackeys, and however close she was to her dad before, she still knew how homophobic he was and had to protect herself from that. And at the time, it was funny, but remember how when Sterling was straight up confessing that she and Luke had sex, EVEN THEN that somehow turned on April. I kind of loved that after the twins started the rumors and April caught on and zeroed in on Sterling, they put a freaking halo around her:
And April knows that on this one, she’s absolutely the one in the right. I can WELL understand her frustration and resentment and wonder if that wasn’t also a part of how much the rift grew.
But anyway, ouch, all that seems like it was setting up the harshest of falls. Now she’s lost everything, the only thing that didn’t happen was being outed. Getting dumped, then kidnapped, by the “aunt” your mom’s lied to you about for your whole life, at gunpoint, tied up, and then worst of all, no twin, wrong parents, charmed life gone. I don’t know, man, where’s she gonna go from there? Who’s she gonna live with–whose car is she going to get into to leave the junkyard, to start with? And you know, I mentioned April not really having friends, but Sterling doesn’t either, outside Blair. Is she gonna avoid her? But then she wouldn’t have anybody to talk to and the show kind of needs her to process this and show us her reactions. Maybe they’ll get her a therapist? She definitely needs one! With this show’s track record, she’ll probably vent by telling Ellen everything in the first minute of season 2.
I don’t know, she’s such a sweetheart, she may just go quiet but seemingly be okay with things only to explode later, instead of getting angry at her parents–at the Wesleys–right off the bat. She may visit Dana in prison, that’ll open up some storylines. I’m not sure if it’ll be made public, even if people know who Dana is, it doesn’t have to be revealed that she’s Sterling’s mom. But however it goes, however tough it all is, it’ll be a period of growth for her in the end, she’ll get through it and she and Blair will come out stronger, that’s just the show. But I don’t really know how those first eps will go, especially with juggling Luke and April and April’s dad and the bounty hunting.
But you know, this is one of the things I SUPER love about having central wlw characters, where that becomes part of the main arc. And in fact, for this show, with its strong religious themes, I mentioned this before too, but the show is literally better off for including this very relevant nuanced plot point for these particular characters and for providing this super organic reason for why Sterling would keep a secret from Blair and actually choose to hang out with someone else. This isn’t tokenism or trying to think of what to do with a character but built into the actual storyline. It’s something that’s a major part of her and will affect and be affected by all the other major storylines. It could be that April ends up being the confidante, although she may have even more reason to choose the “easy” safe option Luke is. We’ll see, I hope!