Off Campus' Author Says Tucker Was Originally Meant To Die
Things were almost *very* different.
Everyone who loves the four Briar U hockey bros at the center of Off Campus can thank Elle Kennedy’s editor that they all got their happy endings in her book series — because initially, one of them was going to be killed off. Kennedy revealed her original plans for the romance saga recently, confirming a central death was changed in the editing process, as well as a major alteration to one endgame couple. Oh, but before we get to the tea, consider this your spoiler alert if you haven’t read the Off Campus books, and want to remain unspoiled about a major plot point that will likely be in Season 2 of the Prime Video adaptation.
Now that Prime Video has confirmed Season 2 of Off Campus will adapt the Dean Di Laurentis-centric book The Score, fans of Kennedy’s novels are bracing themselves for one of the most tragic moments in the story: the death of Beau Maxwell. In the book, Dean’s football star bestie is suddenly killed in a car accident, which sends the hockey player into a self-destructive spiral. However, the death was going to be even more brutal when Kennedy first conceived of it. The author confirmed that John Tucker was originally written to be the character who’d die.
“[Tucker] almost didn’t make it. This is a very sensitive issue for a lot of people,” Kennedy during the June 25 episode of the Off the Shelf podcast. “Tucker was supposed to be the one that you fell in love with, and then you were gonna grieve for.”
She explained how she “always knew” Dean needed to lose someone close to him, to shatter his “so perfect” life. So, she wrote Tucker’s death... only for her editor to vehemently protest the decision.
“I think he became too likable,” Kennedy said. “My editor, she steered it in a way, she knew what people would want as well. I was like, ‘Well, I have this whole arc for Dean, so you gotta lose someone.’ I said, ‘Take your pick. Who would you like?’” After weighing the options, Kennedy and her editor agreed to kill off Beau instead of Tucker.
This alteration also had a major impact on the books’ endgame couples. Kennedy revealed that she had planned on Dean being in a relationship with Sabrina James, but Sabrina instead wound up being the girlfriend of the still-alive Tucker. That switch also had to do with Kennedy not vibing with Dean and Sabrina’s chemistry as much as she thought she would.
“Originally, Dean was paired with Sabrina,” Kennedy said. “I wrote, like, the first 10 pages, and I hated them together. They were so toxic. They didn’t like each other.”
