Just so you know, there are spoilers ahead!
1. During a 2021 appearance on the podcast Avatar: Braving the Elements, Avatar: The Last Airbender creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko spoke about one of their least favorite episodes of the beloved series: "The Great Divide," a Season 1 installment that sees Aang attempting to end the feud between two warring tribes.
DiMartino described the episode as "pretty filler-y," while Konietzko called it "terrible." While Konietzko said he "was not happy with it," he added that every episode contained individual moments that he "really liked." Of the series as a whole, Konietzko said that there is "so much that I would fix," but added that "you can only fix so much."
2. Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad, revealed that he had some significant regrets over the appearance of Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul), and specifically his impressive dental hygiene.
According to Digital Spy, Gilligan told the press, "I'm really sorry Jesse's teeth were so perfect. Aaron Paul's teeth are so perfect, rather — Jesse Pinkman, the character, would get the living hell beaten out of him every week. And then he smoked a lot of meth, which is rough on your teeth!"
Gilligan added that when reflecting on the show, it's "little details" such as Jesse's teeth that make him say to himself, "I wish we'd gotten that right."
Kripke said, "We, the writers, were sure that Lamplighter needed to die for what he did. You know, he burned a bunch of children alive. It's not awesome behavior. But once we cast Shawn and once I was watching his dailies I have to admit I regret [killing Lamplighter]."
He went on, "It was too late. At that point we were already deep in the scripts. But Shawn made that character so world weary and sympathetic for someone who had done such terrible things, and made that character so interesting that I, along with the other writers, were like, 'Goddamn, he's an awesome character.'"
4. Marti Noxon, who was the showrunner on the sixth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, told Vulture that she believed some aspects of the season "hold up really well," while others are "rickety." She pointed toward the sudden death of Tara as an example of the latter.
Tara is killed when she's shot by Warren, a villain who was attempting to kill Buffy. Her death prompts her girlfriend and fellow witch, Willow, to turn to the dark side and go on an epic quest for revenge. Said Noxon, "There were parts of Season Six where I feel we went too far. We pushed into some categories that almost felt sadistic and that Buffy was volunteering for things that were beyond just 'bad choices' and were almost irresponsible for the character."
She went on, "And I think that killing Tara was — in retrospect, of all the people, did she have to die?"
5. According to the New York Daily News, the writing staff behind Sex and the City told Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, the author of Sex and the City and Us, "If we could do it over again the main thing we would choose is not to involve Donald Trump."
Donald Trump is mentioned in the very first episode of the series, when Samantha refers to Carrie's soon-to-be paramour Mr. Big as "the next Donald Trump."
And he has an actual cameo in the Season 2 episode "The Man, the Myth, the Viagra," during which he's having a business meeting at the same bar where Samantha is enjoying a drink.
6. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Shonda Rhimes reflected on the 2006 Grey's Anatomy episode "As We Know It," and noted that one actor was so damn good that she felt a pang when they had to kill off his character anyway.
In the episode, a bomb that has been taken out of a patient's chest by Meredith Grey detonates in the hands of bomb defuser Dylan Young (Kyle Chandler), instantly killing him and flinging Meredith to the ground.
Rhimes said, "[Chandler] would pitch me ideas on how Dylan, his character, could maybe not explode, and I would show him the line in the script that said, 'Dylan explodes.' That’s literally all it said. He was written to explode. But I did not expect to have Kyle Chandler. I didn’t want to explode him." Alas, explode he does.
7. Diablo Cody, who wrote the Academy Award-winning screenplay for Juno, told the Guardian that she regretted not clarifying the teenaged Juno's reasoning for deciding against an abortion. Said Cody, "But I don’t feel I was clear enough in terms of why Juno chose to not have an abortion. It was simply because she did not want to."
Cody went on, "It was not about any type of feeling that abortion was wrong — I’m pro-choice. So for it to be interpreted as an anti-choice movie, that’s upsetting to me."
8. Friends showrunners Marta Kauffman and David Crane revealed in a 2019 Tribeca TV Festival panel that they regret two of the show's storylines in particular.
Kauffman and Crane dislike the plot revolving around Phoebe's stalker, with Kauffman recalling, "We did a lot of rewriting of that to make it work."
They're also not fond of an episode where Phoebe's boyfriend catches chickenpox from her. Said Kauffman, "I’m not sure the chickenpox worked either."
9. Carlton Cuse, the co-showrunner of Lost, told Vulture that he regretted one aspect of the show's contentious finale: The post-credits montage of the wreckage of the plane on the beach, an addition that led some fans of the series to conclude that its characters had been dead all along.
Cuse explained, "I only really have one regret about the whole journey of Lost and that was at the very, very end. Barry Jossen, he called Damon [Lindelof] and me and he said, 'You know, I’m worried that we’re going to come out of this incredibly emotional ending of this show and then slam into a Proctor & Gamble commercial and that isn’t going to be good.'" He requested that they add something to "just kind of ease the audience out of the show."
They decided that the footage of the plane's crash site was the exact right sort of contemplative note to end on. Said Cuse, "So we put that footage at the end of the show and I think that the problem was that the audience was so accustomed on Lost to the idea that everything had meaning and purpose and intentionality. So they read into that footage at the end that, you know, they were dead. That was not the intention. The intention was just to create a narrative pause."
Lindelof added, "But that idea — they were dead the whole time — it negates the whole show, it negates the whole point of the show."
10. Robert Kirkman, a writer for The Walking Dead and the co-creator of the original comic book series it is based upon, told the Hollywood Reporter that he wished the first season hadn't included the characters reaching the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and learning that everyone is infected with the zombie virus.
Kirkman said, "If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t have done the CDC episode. It possibly gave away too much information and was such a big change very early on in the series."
In addition, Kirkman reflected on the first season's finale, and said, "I feel like there might have been a better way to wrap up the first season. It ended up being a fun episode. I love the character of Dr. Jenner and thought Noah did an amazing job. But there were things in that episode that I think seem very much not of The Walking Dead world.”
11. David Chase, the creator of The Sopranos, revealed in an appearance on the podcast Talking Sopranos that he regretted killing off Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero so early in the series.
Bonpensiero, who was played by Vincent Pastore, was killed in the Season 2 finale "Funhouse" after Tony discovers that he is wearing a wire; he organizes Bonpensiero's murder on a boat in the open water. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Chase said, "It was too soon because we all loved that guy, and we loved the actor also. But, it made for a great story. What can I say?"
12. Ilene Chaiken, the creator of The L Word, reflected during an Entertainment Weekly interview that the breast cancer diagnosis and subsequent death of main character Dana (Erin Daniels) in the third season of the show is the "one thing that I regret."
Chaiken said, "We thought this is so much a part of life, and especially, a part of gay life, in which your friends are your family. Even more so than in the straight community, our friends are our family and they mean everything to us, and that loss becomes so deep and so profound. And we wanted to tell a story about that kind of loss, and we felt that we would be wimping out if we told it about somebody who wasn't a main and beloved character. It wouldn't have that impact."
She went on, "I've often said in retrospect that it's the one thing that I regret. It was a good story, I believe in the story, but the audience never forgave me for it. It just upset so many people, and I still mourn the character. It's just the one thing that I maybe would change if I could go back and change anything."
13. And finally: The screenwriters behind Avengers: Endgame, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, told Vanity Fair that while they love how Black Widow's death scene turned out overall, they do think it's a shame that it happens too early in the film for the other characters to reckon with the magnitude of her sacrifice.
Said McFeely, "She jumps on the grenade. I’m really proud of that moment. I don’t have any regrets. The only regret is that it comes at the end of Act Two. So you can’t really roll around in the grief because we’ve got another hour of movie and we haven’t solved the A-plot problem. So that’s the downside."
