Danica McKellar has good news for those who didn’t like the original ending of “The Wonder Years” — things may have changed! The actor, who played Winnie Cooper on the sitcom from 1988 to 1993, opened up about how she views the controversial ending.
In the final episode, which aired May 12, 1993, the narrator revealed that Kevin Arnold (Fred Savage) and Winnie did not end up together, despite their on-again off-again relationship throughout the series. She went to Paris to get her art degree and Kevin got married to someone else, but the pair remained friends.
“Fans still get upset about it,” McKellar said on the Nov. 25 episode of “Pod Meets World.” She explained that often in the show, “everything didn’t all work out in the end,” which was a way to be relatable to the audience.
“Most of our lives don’t out the way we wanted them too, or thought they were going to, so in that same way, Kevin and Winnie did not end up together,” she told hosts Danielle Fishel, Rider Strong and Will Friedle. “I like to say though, look. All we know is what the narrator said happened… He had a baby with his wife and they were the first to greet me off the plane.”
She continued, “That’s only the beginning of the story. Personally, I am divorced and remarried and a lot of people are. Maybe Kevin and Winnie ended up together after all.”
At the time of the series’ end, executive producer Bob Brush reflected on the ending, which made some fans upset.
“Some viewers will be surprised that nothing works out the way your fondest wish would be,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1993. “The message I wanted in there is that that’s part of the beauty of life. It’s fine to say, ‘I’d like everything to be just the way it was when I was 15 and I was happy,’ but it seemed more nurturing to me to say that we leave these things behind and we go on to forge new lives for ourselves.”
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