Revivals like Teen Wolf: The Movie, Veronica Mars, and Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life all highlighted the quandary of revisiting TV show worlds, especially those that begin in a character’s teen years, and then return after a few years to showcase the characters’ adult lives.
Most revivals prove a crash and burn experience that rarely leads to another screen outing. Why? In simple terms, the expectations of viewers and the vision of the writer/creator rarely align. Both sides are emotionally invested, yet hold different priorities.
Creator vs Fan
The question, of course is who does the world belong to? Without the series creator and their imagination and vision, it would not exist. But it could not have been renewed each season without a loyal audience providing consistently successful ratings.
The relationship is symbiotic. Both groups need each other. But when it comes to a TV show return, the parameters of the relationship have changed. Often, the new dynamic fails to satisfy due in part to differing expectations of the fictional world’s evolution.
This is never more obvious than when the audience met their heroes as insecure teenagers. To fans, those onscreen connections were special/unbreakable, and lead characters were meant to become happy and successful, personally and/or professionally.
Writers and Conflict
For the creator, revisiting the show means a chance to throw new challenges at the characters. But having given the series some form of closure in the finale, they feel the need to deliver a world where the previously created or implied HEA is now toast.
Audiences assume the series will begin again at the next phase of Happily Ever After—even if chaos ensues later. Yet creators consistently begin a series in a familiar world with a discontented, messy set-up, fueling viewer dissatisfaction from the get-go.
One of two paths is usually taken. In pursuit of conflict, writers may regress characters in a revisited series so they can return to a similar narrative framework, rehashing variations of past plots, albeit now with world-weary versions of popular characters.
Alternately, writers choose the complete opposite, presenting new relationships, new settings, and almost new personalities for those in beloved fictional worlds, sometimes completely at odds with the iconic small screen reality fans have cherished.
For the creator, the original episodes were birthed by their past self who lived in another world, with a different perspective. In a sense they’re burdened by the expectation of new output that somehow reflects who they were then, not who they are now.
Fans and Character Growth
Fans are often genuinely invested in the happiness of iconic characters. Having watched their personal journey for years—a staggered upward climb of growing self-awareness and personal evolution—audiences assume this evolution continued post-series.
For the fans, iconic characters are larger than life. For the creators, humanizing these icons with mundane failures and disappointments is more appealing, often wiping clean series elements considered canon that originally endeared the show to audiences.
Fans can also forget reality itself has changed in the interim. Many beloved TV shows of the past are now criticized for problematic content in terms of representation, whether racial, sexual or gender-oriented. Definitions of acceptable humor also change.
A few hours cannot provide equal emotional satisfaction as multiple seasons of TV, especially if fans waited years for a “faithful” revisit. Minutes spent on new characters feel wasted, even if creators view these as reflective of authentic life changes.
Treatment of ships also fuels fan dissatisfaction. Romantic couples the series spent years creating, may be swept aside in a revisit, the break-up in the show’s past. Fun for the writer who gets to play with new dynamics. Not so fun for invested fandoms.
Practical Considerations
A fan of a series expects the most popular stars to appear, and the most beloved ships to continue or eventuate. Yet certain talent can be in high demand, impossible to schedule, too expensive for the project, or contracted to competitor networks.
Stars can also be uninterested. Perhaps they didn’t enjoy working on the show, or playing a popular character hindered their career post-series, making them unwilling to bring the character to life again. Management could argue against an appearance.
Studios and production companies may have “thoughts” on the focal points of the new outing. General audiences remember the hit years, not so much later storylines, leading to a push for a return to set-ups marketed early on in the original series.
Lessons Learned
The undocumented time period between the original series and the follow-up series or film, is a lead source of conflict. Making the time gap larger, and/or the changes in circumstance starker and more unexpected, simply exacerbates an already thorny issue.
Imagine an old friend you admire moved overseas to marry and enjoy a new job, with plans to have multiple children. Later, you meet again to discover they are now unemployed, widowed, and their remaining family member has a terminal illness.
Now, imagine instead they’re happy when you reconnect but have returned to a similar state of affairs as when you met a decade ago. Both of these scenarios feel an unsatisfactory outcome for a loved friend—and echo fan responses to revisited television.
A battle between two groups who believe they “know” the best path forward for a fictional universe. For creators, finding an effective middle ground that honors the past while shaping a longer future for the series, is frankly easier said than done.
