There have certainly been on-screen couples that lacked chemistry. But this isn't the case for Fred Savage and Danica McKellar on The Wonder Years. Their characters, Kevin Arnold and Winnie Cooper ranked among the best sitcom couples of all time. The main reason for this is the 'will-they-won't-they' element that was ingrained into the structure of the classic 1988 sitcom. It's one of the reasons why The Wonder Years, which ran until 1993 on ABC, is better than many current sitcoms.
But by the final episode of the series, fans were disappointed to learn that Kevin and Winnie weren't going to end up together. Given what many expected from Hollywood and romance subplots in general, this was a major reversal. But to show creators Carol Black and Neal Marlens, this was an important decision. Here's why Kevin didn't end up with Winnie Cooper.
The Honesty Behind A Young Romance
In an interview with Rolling Stone, the creators and producers of The Wonder Years went into detail about the importance of the premise of the show. Ultimately, what Neal Marlens and Carol Black wanted to do was set a typical coming-of-age story in suburbia against massive social and political upheaval going on simultaneously. The result was a touching and often hilarious story that always felt honest. And honesty was vital in the depiction of young Kevin Arnold and his first crush, the girl next door, Winnie Cooper.
"The brilliance of Neal and Carol’s show, the original concept, was the ability of setting the very small stories of a 12-year-old living in the suburbs and setting it against these gigantic world events — not to mention the third dimension, which is the narrator seeing it from all these years later with an idea of how all these events turned out," executive producer and writer, Bob Brush, said to Rolling Stone. "Winnie Cooper was that person that we meet, that first love that we meet in that dewy-eyed, innocent time of our life, which is so powerful. The one we still think back on, and wonder where she is and how she did."
Winnie represented the 'one that got away' but she also represented also that special individual who gives us our first real experience of the turbulent rollercoaster that is love. She is the person we pine over when we're young. The person we put on a pedestal. And the person we realize isn't exactly who we thought she was. Maybe she's more. Maybe she's just different. Either way, the character is someone every person on the planet can see something in as we've all had that first person we've crushed on hard and maybe got to be with for a while.
But seldom do we end up with that person. And that's the whole point behind the character and relationship between Fred Savage's Kevin Arnold and Danica McKellar's Winnie Cooper.
"Nobody really ends up with their first love," Fred Savage told Rolling Stone. "There are exceptions to the rule, but for the most part, we have our first love and it shapes us, and then we move on. Your first love can always be your first love if you didn’t end up together. But if you have three kids with her, and you have to figure out the carpool, it’s a whole different thing."
On top of this, allowing Kevin and Winnie to be with each other at the end of the series would have added an odd dimension to the narration of the show.
"If you imagine that the narrator was [an older] Kevin Arnold one weekend in his 40s sitting around at halftime of a football game telling old stories of his friends, these stories about Winnie Cooper were not stories of the woman he had married. If Winnie were in the other room cooking dinner, I don’t think he’d be telling quite these stories," Bob explained.
"I was rooting for them [to stay together], but I also knew that The Wonder Years was a show about bittersweet memories so I wasn’t surprised when they didn’t end up together," Danica McKellar, who played Winnie, explained.
"Kevin and Winnie obviously shaped each other in ways that will stay with them forever, but there’s more to their story than just the two of them and they moved to do other things," Fred Savage said. "To me that felt very real — that bittersweet loss of something you wanted so badly."
Both actors have admitted to having crushes on each other throughout the filming of the show. This seems somewhat natural since they were two young kids growing up together in front of a camera. They also claimed that both of their characters did finally seal the deal in the final episode before going their separate ways, even though this was only implied with some heavy kissing. Maybe that's just something Fred and Danica wanted to happen as they, in a strange meta way, represented a 'Winnie Cooper' to each other; a first love that wasn't meant to be.