The Wonder Years showrunner talks casting Yvonne Orji and that homage to the original series

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Thursday's episode of The Wonder Years, "Love & War."

The end of The Wonder Years' latest episode, "Love & War," technically predates the start of the show's run. The final scene reveals that Bruce Williams (Spence Moore II), who recently returned from combat in Vietnam, was friends with Brian Cooper — Winnie Cooper's beloved older brother, who was killed in Vietnam in the original Wonder Years pilot. According to showrunner Saladin K. Patterson, this small bit of connective tissue was something he had in mind from the very beginning of his "reimagined" take on the series.

"When we pitched the show to ABC, we had to talk about some directions that we could go in the series, and some things the characters could experience," Patterson explains. "When I talked about the Bruce character, even in that pitch, I mentioned that he would have served with Brian Cooper and he would have been there when Brian Cooper was killed, and that that would be something that he had to emotionally deal with."

That homage concludes an episode that, like many a Wonder Years installment old and new, deals with serious issues with both humor and heart. Insecure's Yvonne Orji guest-stars as Tammy, an older woman who Bruce is dating and eager (maybe a little too eager) to start the next phase of his life with after facing the death and destruction of the war. The episode serves as a spiritual sequel to an earlier entry, "Home for Christmas," which saw Bruce re-enlist after struggling to readjust to civilian life.

"We wanted to make a statement about the way Black soldiers were affected by the Vietnam War and the perspective of the Black family when you have a son that is going off to fight for a country that isn't fighting for him here at home," Patterson says. "We all had family members who were either involved in Vietnam or had some sort of POV about it, my dad included, and we wanted to represent those points of view. So we decided [Bruce] had an athletic career that was cut short, and that he would come back injured, so that whatever his aspirations were before the war, he sacrificed that. Then we can deal with what a sacrifice meant for a Black family and a Black soldier, compared to their white counterparts."

Read on for more from Patterson about the inspiration for the Brian Cooper connection, how that decision led to Bruce's botched proposal, and why he didn't have to ask Orji to guest-star on the series.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Tell us about the genesis of this episode. What inspired you to tell this story the way that you did?

SALADIN K. PATTERSON: Oddly enough, the seeds of this particular episode were planted as early as the pitch stage for the pilot. When I first started having conversations about what a reimagining of the show would look like, we said, "How much do we want to lean into the original? Do we want there to be any connection?" And the decision was that, no, we wanted this show to be able to stand on its own two feet in terms of the characters and their world, and what it meant to be a Black, middle-class family. We wanted to keep a healthy distance, while also acknowledging our shared DNA with the original creatively and tonally.

But when we decided that Dean would have an older brother who went to Vietnam, and that he would come back alive, we knew the parallels to the character Brian Cooper, who also went off to Vietnam and did not come back. Before we even pitched it to the network, I bounced off of [executive producer Lee Daniels], "You know, it'd be very cool if we say that our character and Brian Cooper knew each other in Vietnam. That feels like a very respectful way to acknowledge that these families do exist in the same world." It just felt like it could be a powerful way to make a statement that shows the unity between the two versions of the show, and also, without sounding too corny, shows how interconnected we all are when it comes to our American experiences, especially when it comes to the fact that we all grieve and experience that concern for loved ones.

And as for the rest of the episode, how did you arrive at the idea of Bruce's relationship with this older woman and her son?

Like I said before, we wanted to make sure that we dutifully addressed some of the real issues that Black soldiers had going to Vietnam and coming back. We addressed them in the Christmas episode, in terms of the fact that our character felt like he had more opportunity in the Army, fighting a war thousands of miles away, than he had in Alabama in the late '60s. In this [episode], we wanted to talk about some of the challenges that soldiers face, but we wanted to do it in a surprising way and focus more on some of the emotional challenges. We talked to other veterans, and we wanted to show some more universal things that they struggled with, and that whole feeling of a young man who feels like he's missed out on some of his formative years because of the war.

So we were like, "What often happens when they come back?" And we all had shared family experiences or loved ones who tended to make some rash decisions in terms of romantic relationships. That led us to think, "What would be the funniest complication that our character could introduce to the family because of this very relatable phenomenon of soldiers coming back and accelerating their relationships? Well, what if she's older? What if he's trying to jump into a ready-made family?" We thought that would also raise interesting questions for [Bruce's] family: How much do we try to let him know we think it's a bad idea, or how much is pushing too much to make him do something even more rash, which is why we have the proposal story turn.

And then that also facilitated us saying, "If we're gonna do the connection with Brian Cooper, is there a way that the emotional impact of that experience is also contributing to decisions Bruce is making now that he's back from the war?" If he and Brian were close, and he realizes that Brian now does not have a future, then maybe part of what Bruce is doing is trying to have the future that he knows Brian can't have now.

How did you end up casting Yvonne Orji as Tammy?

We were very, very blessed and fortunate to be able to cast Yvonne. She's an amazing actress, as everyone knows, and coming off the series finale of Insecure, I think people were reminded of how great an actress she was and wanted to see her do something else. Yvonne and I were actually working on another project together, something she had set up at Disney+ that's exploring adolescence from the point of view of a Nigerian teenage girl. So she and I had been talking a lot about themes of family, coming of age, and perspective, and she was watching The Wonder Years as a fan and as a supporter, so she was well aware of the show.

When this opportunity came up, it was one of those things where, because she's a friend, I didn't want to take advantage of that friendship to say, "Hey, would you want to do our show?" But thankfully, she brought it up first. She was like, "Hey Saladin, when are you gonna ask me to do your show?" [Laughs] And I was like, "Well, you know, it just so happens that there is the perfect thing for you that I was hoping you'd be interested in doing." So it kind of happened organically that way.

Are we going to see more of her character on the show?

She's very busy, obviously, but she had a great time, and we had a great time, and she did a fantastic job. And we purposely ended the episode saying that Bruce and Tammy stay together, and we even reference her by name and at least one or two more episodes this season, just to keep it alive that they're having a relationship. We certainly wanted to leave the door open to bring her back if the stars align for season 2.

While we're looking ahead, where does Bruce go from here? We saw in the Christmas episode that he made it out of the war without any apparent mental or physical problems, but can you tease what else that story line has in store?

We're certainly going to reintegrate Bruce back into the family, and everybody has to figure out what his role is now, because he left a boy and came back a man. We have an episode that addresses that, in that his parents are still having a little bit of a hard time not trying to put him back in the role of the son that they need to take care of. And the humor and irony come from the fact that he was overseas fighting a war, and yet now he comes home and they try to give him a curfew. There's some growing pains there that I think are pretty relatable to a lot of families — not just ones who have kids who go off to war, but when a kid goes off to college and comes back home, and the parents have to figure out, how do we treat you like an adult when we don't feel like you're an adult, but you certainly feel like one?

And then we felt we did a good job establishing that Bruce and Dean have a very loving and nurturing relationship, but when Bruce is back in the house, we also wanted to dive deeper into this reality that they're still siblings. And as siblings, there will still be conflict, and they'll still get on each other's nerves. So we have a story where Dean and [his sister] Kim actually bond together, which is an odd thing for them, but it's because Bruce upsets the delicate balance that they had established in terms of responsibility and what they can get away with. Bruce comes back as the model son, and really starts to make them look bad. We wanted to have fun with putting him back in a situation where we get to see them be siblings and have some hopefully funny sibling conflict, as well as the more weighty stuff that we deal with with him as a soldier.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

The Wonder Years airs Wednesdays at 8:30 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.

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