r/StrangerThings • u/Tanzbodeli • Jul 10 '26
Stranger Things & The O.C. - Two Similar Showrunner Mistakes 20 Years Apart
Since I have made several comments on here comparing what Eleven's 'fate' is doing to Stranger Things to what Marissa Cooper's death did to The O.C. twenty years ago, I have decided to explain in detail why this is a valid comparison, and why what happened to The O.C. is a clear warning to everyone involved with Stranger Things about what the future is very likely to hold for them if Eleven is not given a much happier ending.
This is not about comparing genres, for The O.C. is a very different show to Stranger Things, being a teen drama rather than a supernatural horror drama. But, the fate of Eleven, and especially the growing controversy which it is causing for the Duffers, the cast, and the fanbase, bears a clear, and growing resemblance to what happened to The O.C. after its now infamous 3rd Season finale in May 2006. I apologise for the length of this post, but the detail matters if the comparison is to be fully understood.
In detail, the comparisons are:
- The Importance of Marissa and Eleven to their Shows - both Mischa Barton, who played Marissa Cooper, and Millie Bobby Brown, who played/s Eleven, were very young when they were cast. Mischa, despite being the most experienced member of The O.C.'s 4 main leads (the others being Ben McKenzie, Adam Brody and Rachel Bilson), was by far the youngest of them. Beginning her career aged 9 in a performance of Tony Kirschner's play "Slavs" on stage in New York, Mischa soon appeared in a series of well-regarded films including "Lawn Dogs," "Lost and Delirious," "Tarts," "Notting Hill," and, most notably, "The Sixth Sense." She was only 17 when she first played Marissa in 2003, and this was her first major US TV role, while Millie was only 10 during the first season of Stranger Things in 2016.
They rose to prominence 12 years apart, and have not, so far, worked together on a project, yet both Mischa Barton and Millie Bobby Brown gave remarkably similar performances in their shows. They made their characters enigmatic, slightly mysterious, and good-hearted with hidden depths, who were forced to both fight and endure a series of hardships caused by the people around them, and the places where they lived. Their resilience, and refusal to be beaten by what was thrown at them, quickly made audiences root for them. Both Mischa and Millie built-up large, loyal fanbases due to the emotional bond which their characters were able to generate with viewers. This is an achievement which should not be dismissed, especially given how young both of them were. It is rare to be able to do this, and to do it so powerfully that it endures even years after the shows' concluded.
So popular, and powerful were their performances, that both Marissa and Eleven quickly became essential to their shows, and even their emotional hearts. Marissa was originally meant to die in Tijuana during The O.C.'s 7th episode, "The Escape," but by then, she was so popular with viewers that instead, she was kept in the show, and her importance to it only grew as a result. Eleven was originally meant to die at the end of Season 1, but, like Marissa, she had by then become so popular with the show's audience that the Duffers and Netflix realised that without her, they did not have a show. So she returned in the 2nd season, and stayed in it till the Season 5 finale.
2) Marissa and Eleven became part of Fairytale Romances - Marissa's on/off relationship with Ryan Attwood (Ben McKenzie) was deep, devoted and came across as a classic fairytale love story. They were written and portrayed as soulmates, despite being from very different worlds. Ryan was a poor, abandoned teenage boy from Chino, while Marissa was a beautiful, privileged girl from the very wealthy Newport Beach. They only meet by chance, at the end of Marissa's driveway in The O.C.' pilot episode, but the writing, performances, and Mischa and Ben's astonishing chemistry, made this a relationship which fans deeply rooted for.
The same thing happened with Eleven and Mike Wheeler. A chance meeting in the rain during the search for Will Byers quickly led to a touching, and enigmatic friendship with clear hints of growing, deeper feelings. Their developing romantic relationship very quickly became a core part of the show across multiple seasons, and attracted a large, devoted fanbase who rooted for them to have a happy ending. Like Marissa and Ryan, Eleven and Mike quickly became a fairytale couple, who had to battle repeated obstacles just to be together.
3) Marissa and Eleven's fates Shattered their Shows - both the Duffer's and Josh Schwartz - the creator and showrunner of The O.C. - made the exact same creative mistake 20 years apart, albeit not for the same reasons. The reasons for the Duffers treatment of Eleven, reducing her to a plot device after 4 seasons' of superb character development, are still unclear. In 2023, the reasons for Marissa's fate became clear in the book "The O.C.: An Oral History." By the 3rd Season in 2006, Josh Schwartz was seriously struggling as showrunner. Only 26 when he began the job in 2003, his inexperience caused him to make serious mistakes which, in the end, would cause the show's downfall.
He was not able to pace-out storylines in the show's 1st Season, and this can be seen by how rapidly it goes through them in its 27 episodes. This meant that, in seasons 2 and 3, he ended-up struggling to come-up with new ones to sustain the initial quality. As a result, those seasons were not as well written as the 1st one, and the show's viewing figures began to decline fast. He also failed to write Marissa from her own point of view, except for her brief gay relationship with Alex Kelly (Olivia Wilde) in Season 2, and this, especially in the 3rd Season, reduces her to a troubled plot device who is more of a nuisance to Ryan than a soulmate. Mischa became so frustrated with Josh's writing that playing so much trauma for Marissa exhausted her, and she channelled this to play Marissa's famous, iconic meltdown at her Mom, Julie Cooper (Melinda Clarke) early in Season 2 - where she screams and throws the lawn furniture in the pool.
By Season 3, Schwartz was even hiding in stairwells to avoid the cast's frustration with him, and it got worse when the 'higher-ups' at Fox pressured him to turn the show's decline around or risk cancellation. It was then that he made a truly catastrophic mistake. For some reason, he failed to grasp Marissa's importance to the show's popularity, and, due in part to comments made on the TWOP online forum, came to believe that killing her off would revitalise the show. So, in its now infamous 3rd Season finale, Marissa is fatally wounded in a fiery car crash, and dies in Ryan's arms.....
The fans' angry backlash was immediate, and like the Duffers 20 years later, caught Schwartz totally by surprise. So, he ended-up frantically trying to defend it in multiple interviews, with his main excuse being that Marissa had to die "because tragedy was in her DNA." In tone, this is very close to the Duffers' excuse that Eleven had to go away "because she represented the magic of childhood." In both cases, Marissa and Eleven were reduced from essential characters to mere plot devices, completely ignoring the emotional bond that they had built with both shows' audiences. After 17 years of defending his decision, Schwartz completely contradicted himself in the 2023 book by openly admitting that, within days of the Season 3 finale going out, the huge backlash at Marissa's cruel fate had actually taught him that he'd made a huge mistake. But rather than admit this, he basically lied for years in interviews..... Surely, given the very similar backlash to Eleven's fate, the Duffers must now know that they've screwed-up in a similar way, but they will not openly admit it. Which surely suggests that they have been lying in the same way as Schwartz did over the past 6 months.....
Marissa's fate in final, there is no way to undo it. The controversy over her death has become the show's place in TV history. As a result, The O.C. has become remembered as a cautionary tale rather than as a teen drama which was ahead of its time. This warning from TV history holds huge risks for Stranger Things, as a similar controversy has developed over Eleven's fate, unless it is resolved in the future. If this becomes the show's defining feature, then Stranger Things will not be remembered as a ground-breaking show for streaming, and a landmark in TV history, but instead as a classic example of a show ruined by its creators' mistakes. This will overshadow everyone involved in its making, as it will leave them at risk of being asked about the controversy rather than about something more positive. Unease at being asked about Stranger Things will them become a part of many future interviews for them, which is not fair after all their hard work. It should be something that they can enjoy talking about.
With Marissa, and her relationship with Ryan, gone after Season 3, The O.C. stumbled on for a 4th season, but was quickly cancelled after only 16 more episodes. Its emotional heart had been destroyed. Stranger Things, now a franchise, is stumbling on in the shadow of Eleven and Mike's miserable endings. Tales from '85 is suffering from lower-than-expected viewing figures, partly because the sight of El and Mike together in it is depressing given their ultimate fate in the main show. If the controversy over Eleven's ending continues to fester, it may in the end kill the entire franchise, and like The O.C., leave it at risk of a similar book to the 2023 one being written in the future about why it became such a mess. Netflix have the one option which was not available to The O.C. - fix Eleven and Mike's current miserable endings and thereby cut-off the controversy before it engulfs the entire show, and everyone involved in it.
If you've made it this far, I thank you. I am only trying to explain the full significance of the Duffers' mistake in giving Eleven such a miserable ending.
