On May 14, 2003, my friend Christine and I huddled around her television to watch the Dawson’s Creek finale, bracing ourselves to cry. The promos had warned us that one of the core four was going to die, but who would it be? We didn’t know, so we had a cake made that said “RIP Dawson/Joey/Pacey/Jen.” It sat on the coffee table while we held our breath.
Two hours later, the two of us—just juniors in high school—finally knew how the show would end. And then it was over, forever. In 2004, all you could hope for were reruns; streaming didn’t exist yet. When the DVDs came out, I bought them immediately.
Over the 27 years since it first aired in 1998, I’ve never grown tired of my favorite teen drama. It has been the backdrop of my adolescence, a comfort in college dorm rooms, and the kind of show I’ve revisited in full or in fragments whenever life demanded a familiar companion. My last rewatch was in the earliest days of Covid, when time felt suspended and there was something deeply reassuring about returning to Capeside, where the biggest problems were who kissed whom (“back to you, Bob!”) and what the future might hold.
Want to hear the episode detailing every single moment of my experience at the Dawson’s Creek reunion?
