One Tree Hill Had TV’s Most Underrated Time Jump

When you think of shows that define teen drama, One Tree Hill is at the very top of the list. The beloved CW series had everything a young audience looks for: from messy love triangles to half-brother angst. When it made the jump to take its characters from high school to their adult years between seasons 4 and 5, however, the show reached a whole new and exciting level. 

It’s extremely difficult to do a successful time jump, especially when it comes to the YA genre. If it’s done incorrectly, it can ruin the entire show as well as its characters, losing fans in the process as they long for what the show once was. One Tree Hill managed to use its time jump to not only elevate the storylines but breathe new life into its beloved group of characters after graduation. 

In the early-to-mid 2000s, many sci-fi shows such as Lost and Battlestar Galactica got fixated on trying to master the time jump. What stands out about time jumps in that particular genre is that they often serve to move the actual plot forward rather than for the sake of the characters and their development. Since most of the time, teen dramas don’t have one specific or main plot throughout the entire series, this gives the writers a lot more freedom in what they can do for the characters in a way that makes it more relatable to the audience. If you look at Nathan Scott (James Lafferty) in the first episode of the series compared to the last, they’re two completely different people and that isn’t because of a time jump or singular event, it’s because of his development as a character which was done in two incredible and distinct arcs that happen to take place years apart. 

The season 4 finale could have easily served as the series finale and that’s because, in a lot of ways, it was the end of a chapter. Karen (Moira Kelly) had her and Keith’s (Craig Sheffer) daughter, Haley (Bethany Joy Lenz) and Nathan had their son, Lucas (Chad Michael Murray) and Peyton (Hilarie Burton) are finally together, Dan (Paul Johansson) turns himself in, and the last scene is a rematch between the Scott brothers after the gang agrees that they’ll be friends forever. 

The next chapter of One Tree Hill begins in the season 5 premiere and takes place “4 Years, 6 Months, 2 Days,” which is also the name of the episode, after we last saw the group of friends. As the episode summary in part says, “In many ways, the journey is just beginning.” 

Haley and Nathan’s son, Jamie (Jackson Brundage), is four now, and in his first scene, he’s playing basketball with a hoop that his Uncle Lucas got him, except fans will quickly realize something is severely wrong with Nathan, who not only doesn’t want his son playing but is in a very different place than when we last saw him. It turns out that it’s been four months since a life-changing fight that landed him in a wheelchair and cost him his dreams after he was the 10th pick in the NBA draft for the Seattle SuperSonics. 

Naturally, losing everything he worked so hard for is devastating and a way to reset his character in many ways. Rather than Haley being the one to change him for the better, this time the growth is all thanks to Jamie. After throwing Jamie’s hoop, which he only uses because he wants to be like his father, Nathan realizes how far he has pushed his family away. He then takes his first steps out of the wheelchair towards his son and apologizes before hugging him. 

Lucas is trying to write his second novel and has a job as the head coach of the Tree Hill Ravens with Skills (Antwon Tanner) as his new assistant head coach. Unfortunately, we quickly realize that something happened between him and Peyton, who has just quit her job at a music label. Meanwhile, Brooke (Sophia Bush) is successfully running Clothes Over Bros and a phone call from Peyton sums up everything perfectly: they don’t know who they are anymore or how they got there. This leads to both of them going back home to Tree Hill to be with the people they love. 

All of this setup within just one episode gives fans a lot of rich storylines to look forward to for the rest of the season. The reason why the solo character plots work so brilliantly is because they each have their own journey rather than all coming back for one thing, such as a death or mystery. Instead, they have to rediscover who they were and what Tree Hill meant to them individually and as a group. Despite all of them being in a new place in their lives, they crave a sense of belonging that only Tree Hill can give them. 

This makes the time jump effective not only for the characters but for the audience as well, who also crave that comfort and belonging. Obviously, not all of the main characters could go to the same college or be on the same life path, so having them all reunite after four and a half years was the perfect way to move us into adulthood without missing a beat or forcing fans through another four years of school drama. One of the important elements of this time jump was that all of the main actors returned. This is noteworthy because the series does feature two other time jumps later on and one of them suffers from the loss of Murray and Burton as leads.

During an interview with BuddyTV, One Tree Hill creator Mark Schwahn explained why the time jump worked so perfectly. At the time, UPN and the WB merged and he had to pitch season 4, which led to season 5. “Somebody in the room sort of made a joke that the kids were getting really old, and they didn’t know if that [season 5] was plausible. I said to them, ‘Well, I have a fix for that. I want to skip college. I said, ‘You know, nobody has ever done it before, and I think shows of our ilk tend to suffer when they go to college.’ Shows have survived it, but I think creatively they’ve never been as strong. We’ve been pretty accelerated in terms of the stuff we’ve done in high school on our show, and I just felt like we were going to start regurgitating stories and start being extremely redundant in college. I also think that, you know, one of the reasons they pay me is that if we come across an obstacle that has been a problem in the past, and it has been for these types of shows, my job is to figure out how to overcome that obstacle creatively.”

And just like that, the time jump for teen dramas was successfully born. Since then, many teen dramas such as Pretty Little Liars and Riverdale have taken a page out of One Tree Hill’s book, doing time jumps for the very same reason. However, if you ask the fans, many of these time jumps have failed due to poor character development, which is arguably the most important piece of the time jump puzzle and something One Tree Hill mastered. Regardless of how you felt about the show’s ending or ships, there is a reason why this group of characters is still so beloved to this day.

One Tree Hill is available to stream on Hulu and Max in the U.S. and ITVX in the U.K.