Spoilers ahead for the final season of All American: Homecoming.
The All American: Homecoming era has ended on The CW in the 2024 TV schedule, with the series finale airing just months after the original series' sixth season closed on an episode that really felt like an ending. Although showrunner Nkechi Okoro Carroll didn't know that Homecoming's third season would be the last when planning it out, the finale tied up some loose threads anyway and gave Simone and Lando a happy ending. And as it turns out, that happy ending might not have hit as hard if not for an episode earlier in the season that was actually inspired by one of Dawson's Creek's best installments. Who knew?!
In the wake of the series finale, All American: Homecoming showrunner Nkechi Okoro Carroll spoke with Deadline about the final season, including the very special episode that was almost entirely about Simone and Lando. She shared that the inspiration behind the episode came from a show that aired on the same network decades earlier, before The WB became The CW. Carroll said:
Oh, it’s no secret to anyone how much I love Dawson’s Creek. One of my favorite, favorite episodes of Dawson’s Creek was when Joey (Katie Holmes) and Pacey (Joshua Jackson) got stuck in the fictitious Walmart or whatever, overnight. It was really just predominantly an episode about the two of them, and it’s when Joey realized that Pacey never actually fell out of love with her, that it’s just something he learned to live with. It is truly one of my favorite episodes. I talk about it all the time. My friends are so over all of it. They’re over my perpetual love for Pacey, and so it’s something I talked about ad nauseam with my co-showrunner, Marqui [Jackson].
The Dawson's Creek episode that Nkechi Okoro Carroll is referring to is called "Castaways" and aired in the latter half of the sixth and final season. It ranks on CinemaBlend's picks for the best Dawson's Creek episodes and is definitely a classic... as long as you're Team Pacey/Joey and not Team Dawson/Joey, anyway! As somebody who qualifies, I'm now ready to rewatch "Castaways," with Dawson's Creek fortunately available streaming both with a Hulu subscription and an Amazon Prime Video subscription. Nkechi Okoro Carroll continued:
When we were friends, like he was writing on House, and I was writing on Bones, and our entire career is coming up together…he has heard me talk about this episode so much. So when we were breaking the season, I was like, ‘We need to find these moments to really make the Simone and Lando connection. It’s not enough that she just turns around like oh well, I want to be with him now. We really have to see that moment of connection, and when he really steps up for her in a big way, and her cancer treatment and everything.’
If Simone and Lando were indeed going to be endgame of All American: Homecoming, there needed to be a point of the two getting back on the same page, or at least the same chapter of the same book. Co-showrunner Marqui Jackson came up with the idea of an episode that plays out similarly to "Castaways" on Dawson's Creek, to the surprise and delight of Carroll. She concluded:
So Marqui was basically like, ‘Oh, I want to write that episode, and I know the version of the episode I want to do, and I want to surprise you.’ So as we got closer to the episode, and we’re getting ready to get into the room to break, he was like, ‘I want to write a version of your favorite episode and give you this rom-com, 42 minutes that’s really just about these two characters falling in love and not even realizing it. And I was like, ‘Man, if that’s not a good friend.’ I talked about it for 14 years, and he’s like, ma’am, I need you to discuss something else. So it was Marqui Jackson’s idea to do it as a solo with the two of them.
If you want to revisit the first two seasons of All American: Homecoming in the wake of the finale, you can do so now with a Netflix subscription. Season 3 will be arriving on the streamer soon as well. All six seasons of All American so far are available on Netflix as well.
If Nkechi Okoro Carroll's comments also put you in the mood to revisit the days of Dawson, Joey, and Pacey, you can find Dawson's Creek on Hulu and Prime Video... or just watch the series premiere of Joshua Jackson's Doctor Odyssey on Hulu, which totally gave me some unexpected Creek vibes.