There is one major rule when it comes to casting a TV series that one plans on continuing past 3 years: stay away from creating “ageless” child characters. In just about every series, that character type seems to be the main downfall of the realism of a series, from LOST to Saved by the Bell.
That’s where Glee showrunner Ryan Murphy has decided to pull some strings. It seems that the decision has been made to not have the show’s stars, Chris Colfer, Lea Michele and Cory Monteith, return for the fourth season. Here’s the breakdown from THR.
Murphy tells THR: “You can keep them on the show for six years and people will criticize you for not being realistic, or you can be really true to life and say when they started the show they were very clearly sophomores and they should graduate at the end of their senior year.”
Murphy added that planning for the future beyond high school will be a heavy theme during Season 3, noting that “more characters are leaving than are staying” when graduation time comes at the season’s end.
“We’ve never done anything by the book,” he said, adding that who’s graduating and who’s staying will be revealed in the Sept. 20 season premiere. “We made that decision and I involved Chris and Lea and they thought that was a good idea. They both trust the writing and trust me and felt that it would be great to have an open and closed experience for them to go out while they were on top.”
So you can expect your happy weekly musical starring a ragtag group of kids to get pretty “heavy” in the coming episodes. Just what you wanted, right?
