That ’90s Show EP Talks Leia and Nate’s Near-Kiss and the ‘Very Real Fallout’ Come Episode 2
Warning: The following contains spoilers for That ’90s Show Part 2, Episodes 1 and 2.
Leia and Nate’s almost-kiss sets off a (somewhat) surprising chain of events in That ’90s Show Part 2.
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By the end of Episode 1, Leia’s boyfriend Jay, and Nate’s girlfriend Nikki, know that their significant others almost locked lips. And by the end of Episode 2, Leia and Jay have worked things out and decided to give their relationship another chance — that is, after Jay attempts to even the score by flirting with Donna!
It’s Nate and Nikki’s relationship that ultimately suffers the brunt of the damage. “Our entire relationship is falling apart, and we spent the whole day caring about other people,” Nikki points out. “That’s messed up… right?” This leads to a discussion about how much they’ve been fighting, and how maybe, just maybe, they would have been better off had Nate kissed Leia. That way, Nate says, Nikki “would have broken up with me instead of me having to say that I don’t think we should be together anymore.”
In an interview with TVLine, showrunner Gregg Mettler says that they “wanted there to be some fallout, some very real fallout,” after Leia and Nate almost kissed. But they weren’t ready to throw in the towel on Leia and Jay.
“We didn’t have a ton of time to explore that relationship in Part 1,” he acknowledges. “We wanted to do more with that. We wanted to dig in and find out how they relate to each other. But we definitely wanted there to be some real fallout, so we decided to go with the Nikki and Nate break-up — what that means, how they react, how the gang reacts, and how they relapse. It gives you great stories, and Maxwell [Acee Donovan, who plays Nate] and Sam [Morelos, who plays Nikki] are absolutely wonderful together, whether the characters are together or apart.”
In the meantime, we wanted to know whether the writers ever actually considered pairing Leia with Nate in Part 2. Here’s what Mettler told us: “We discuss every different combination of every character in the room, and that one came up. We wouldn’t have gone there at the end of Part 1 if we didn’t think there was something potentially there.
“Coming into Part 2, we wanted to do a lot of stories involving Leia’s coming of age, so we decided [not to pursue Leia and Nate] on purpose,” the EP clarifies. “But these ensemble sitcoms — look at Friends, look at That ’70s Show — tend to explore every different relationship, so all options remain open. You never know where we’re going to land.”
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