Felicity Cast on That Time Travel Ending, Potential Revival

The cast of Felicity reunited in Austin as part of the ATX Television Festival, twenty years following the premiere of the show. The college-set drama ran for four seasons on The WB, from 1998 to 2002, and helped launch the careers of Keri Russell, Scott Foley, Scott Speedman, Greg Grunberg, and J.J. Abrams, who was a co-creator of the show.

The group discussed many subjects, from the iconic haircut Felicity (and Russell) got between Seasons 1 and 2 (“It’s such a typical college girl story where a guy breaks up with her and she cuts her hair and it looks bad,” said Russell) to what was in Meghan’s box in Season 1 (actress Amanda Foreman doesn’t know, but she likes to imagine it was either a murder confession or a finger).

However, some of the most fertile conversation happened around the show’s ending, which, in true unpredictable network TV fashion, was given five more episodes after having written and shot what the show thought would be the series finale of the show.

“There was [two endings],” recalled Russell, “because the network canceled us, kind of, and then said, ‘Just kidding, do a few more.’ … I remember J.J. and Matt saying the show is going to end and they can’t tell us if it’s this number or this number. Regardless if they give us the extra four episodes or not, she has to graduate. And then last minute they said do a few more.”

Abrams and his co-creator Matt Reeves decided to introduce a generically strange, but pretty creative time travel plot that sees Felicity discovering what would have happened if, instead of choosing to be with Ben, she decided to be with Noel. While the storyline was an unconventional one for the show (though hinted at Abrams and Reeves’ science fiction genre futures), Foreman applauded the choice the writers made.

“I thought it was a really fun thing because she was questioning if she made the right decision picking Ben — because Ben turned out to be kind of a turd — so she got to go back,” said Foreman, who remembered the plot much better than most of her co-stars. “I thought it was great, really clever.”

But will the Season 4 finale be the final Felicity story? The inevitable revival question came up. The ATX TV Festival does have a history of hosting reunions for shows that are later successfuly revived—i.e. Gilmore Girls, which was the featured reunion in 2015 before reuniting on Netflix. What are the chances the Felicity cast might do the same?

Russell stayed quiet on the subject, but Scott Foley (Noel) and Scott Speedman (Ben) seemed open to the idea. Foley noted that, just the previous day, he had told Deadline he didn’t think Felicity should be rebooted or revived, but, upon getting up on the stage with his co-stars and seeing their faces, he may have changed his mind. 

“I would love to work with everyone again and get an opportunity to find out what happened to [everyone]… I’ve missed you guys!” Same, Noel. Same.