Sophia Bush and Bethany Joy Lenz are not fans of how Chad Michael Murray and Hilarie Burton Morgan’s One Tree Hill characters disappeared from the series following their exit.
“Katie says, ‘I wish we could have seen Haley reading a letter from Lucas just to hear what was going on in their lives. We don’t hear from Lucas until the last season. What would y’all imagine Lucas, Peyton and Sawyer are up to?’” Lenz, 43, read aloud during the fan question segment of her and Bush’s “Drama Queens” podcast.
Lenz and Bush — who played Haley and Brooke respectively — drew a blank about what happened to the duo’s characters.
“I don’t even remember where they moved,” Lenz said. “Where did they go?”
Hilarie Burton Morgan is recalling how she and One Tree Hill costar Chad Michael Murray found out they weren’t returning for season 7 of the long-running series – and fans are surprised by her candid admission. During the Sunday, May 19, episode of her “Drama Queens” podcast, Burton Morgan, 41, told cohosts and former costars […]
Murray and Burton Morgan played love interests, Lucas and Peyton. In season 6, they got married and welcomed a daughter named Sawyer. At the end of the season, the family of three left Tree Hill behind and drove off into the sunset. However, the show never explained why.
“I don’t know why they left and where they moved,” Lenz shared. “Did Lucas get [a job?] ‘Cause he can write from anywhere.”
While Bush was unsure of the exact storyline, she believed that it might have had something to do with their characters going across the country.
Hilarie Burton and Chad Michael Murray in “ONE TREE HILL.” Fred Norris / © Warner Bros. / Courtesy: Everett Collection
“I feel like I remember a West Coast thing or that they wanted to travel while he wrote his next novel,” she said. “This is the problem, they didn’t give us enough to make [sense] of where our friends went.”
Lenz echoed similar sentiments stating she had “no idea” what happened.
“Who knows? Did they start a new life in Maine or in Napa? Are they renting a trailer just driving around the country? Did they move to Europe?” she theorized. “Where are they?”
Bush brought up that texting was coming into play at the time, so it would have been easy to keep Murray and Burton Morgan’s characters in the show’s universe.
“I know we brought this up with the powers that be at the time, but I feel like it was more of personal beef than anything that made sense for our characters, which is unfortunate,” she claimed. “I used to ask and be like, ‘Why can’t Brooke be getting text messages from Peyton? Why can’t you see them texting? Like why am I not getting photo updates of this baby?’ It feels really weird.”
Lenz agreed it was strange for the show to not bring up Lucas or Peyton again especially when One Tree Hill’s “world was built around” their relationship.
For the cast of One Tree Hill, the line between fact and fiction was often blurred. The show’s stars claim that events from their real lives — from their personal interests to their traumas — would find their way into their characters’ storylines. “[The producers] made practice of taking advantage of people’s personal lives,” Sophia […]
“It’s like trying to prove that the show could go on without them and it did, but it could have made more sense,” she said. “And [it] would have been more nice to just have their presence still around in some way.”
Murray, Burton Morgan, Bush and Lenz all starred on One Tree Hill when it premiered in 2003. Murray and Burton Morgan exited the series after six seasons. It was reported at the time that Murray’s departure was due to contract negotiations and a desire to pursue other projects. Burton Morgan, for her part, left to pursue other opportunities. In May 2024, Burton Morgan revealed that neither herself nor Murray were offered season 7 contracts.
Following Murray and Burton Morgan’s exits, One Tree Hill continued for an additional three seasons. Before the show wrapped up in 2012, Murray made a brief return in season 9.
