"I would get Pacey with Joey and have a King Arthur-esque story -- Dawson being King Arthur -- exploring what happens when Lancelot and Guinevere fall in love."
The above quote comes from "Dawson's Creek" showrunner Greg Berlanti in Vulture's retrospective into the much-fretted love story that emerged between characters Joey Potter and Pacey Witter. Somehow, despite the show being named after the floppy-haired Dawson Leery character, and six seasons of episodes hinting Dawson and Joey were soul mates, the series ended with Joey and Pacey getting back together.
Pacey fans will argue, but this is particularly egregious as Joey says not once, but twice during the finale that she is "soul mates" with Dawson, making this proclamation both to Pacey and the body of water owner himself.
Through Vulture's discussion with Berlanti -- who started as a writer on the show, then took it over at the ripe age of 28, then left to do his own show, only to return to co-write the finale -- the mystery has finally been solved as to why Dawson was doomed to cry forever and ever to eventually create a spinoff, "Dawson's Second Creek."
Berlanti explained that The WB had tasked him with making the show less stagnant, which led him to throw his three main characters into a love triangle. Original creator Kevin Williamson had left the show when Berlanti took over, so the new showrunner began to dissolve the original modeling of the character and the once hard-set plan for Dawson and Joey to end up together.
"[Joey and Pacey] always had such wonderful chemistry, the two of them -- they have a Tracy and Hepburn quality that I liked writing for," Berlanti told Vulture, defending his reasoning.
At the end of Season 4, Berlanti resigned to create his own show, "Everwood," but then returned with Williamson for the "Dawson's Creek" finale. As Berlanti exposed, "[Williamson] had always envisioned the show as one thing -- Joey and Dawson -- and I think he always thought he had to write that."
But as the two wrote the finale, Berlanti apparently convinced Williamson that the show was no longer about Joey and Dawson. It was always about Dawson's "creek." And, as mentioned before, you can't start a Dawson's creek without a Dawson spark tear.
"As we were breaking the story, Kevin felt like the rest of the show had happened without him, [and it] had gone in this [other] direction," Berlanti explained. Dawson's tears had created a strong enough current that even Williamson could no longer swim against it.
In the original mythology, when King Arthur learns that Sir Lancelot and his wife Guinevere ended up together, he sentenced her to burn to death at a stake. While Arthur chases Lancelot across Europe, he loses his kingdom and is eventually slain in battle. Guinevere is spared and spends her life in a convent.
Presumably, following the recent "Gilmore Girls" rebirth, this will be the plot of the "Dawson's Creek" revitalization by Netflix.
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