ThroughoutOne Tree Hill’snine-season run, there was no shortage ofcolorful characterswalking the streets of this drama-filled North Carolina town. As we bore witness to years of generational daddy issues, multiple murder plots, and about a bazillionhigh school basketball games, we can see how one person was consistently at the center of it all. He served as mayor of Tree Hill, had his own talk show, and was briefly a burger cook at a diner in which we never saw a single patron. This was none other than Dan Scott (Paul Johansson).
One Tree Hill
Half-brothers Lucas and Nathan Scott trade between kinship and rivalry both on the basketball court and in the hearts of their friends in the small, but not so quiet town of Tree Hill, North Carolina.
Dan Scott Is a Character You Love To Hate on ‘One Tree Hill’
Dan Scott is a character that you love to hate. Particularly in the early seasons ofOne Tree Hill, he is shown to be a malicious, manipulative, and at times, murderous man who stalks through town bullying teenagers and emotionally abusing his sons Nathan (James Lafferty) and Lucas (Chad Michael Murray). Dan is introduced as Tree Hill’s own American Psycho, veiling sociopathic tendencies behind his car-salesman smile and wrappingthe small coastal townaround his finger. And yet, despite every evil thing that Dan did onOne Tree Hill,he still found a way to make us not root for him, but constantly excited to see what he’ll do next, through his biting one-liners and insane charisma. Dan may not have beenthe best person in Tree Hill, but he was certainly the most fun to watch.
Keith’s Murder in Season 3 of ‘One Tree Hill’ Made Dan Unforgivable
Before we get into why Dan Scott is the best character onOne Tree Hill, we have to acknowledge the havoc he wreaked on everybody else.Dan’s most unforgivable moment was undeniably when he killed his brother, Keith(Craig Sheffer), in Season 3, Episode 16, “With Tired Eyes, Tired Minds, Tired Souls, We Slept.” This was probablyOne Tree Hill’smost complex and devastating episodeand revolved around troubled student Jimmy Edwards (Colin Fickes) bringing a gun to school. While Peyton (Hilarie Burton Morgan) is accidentally injured by a rogue bullet, Jimmy doesn’t shoot anybody until the end of the episode when he tragically takes his own life as Keith begs him not to. Just moments after Jimmy’s death, Dan walks into the school, picks up the gun, and kills Keith without a second thought or a single witness (or so we thought), ultimately framing Jimmy for the murder. Keith’s death sends shock waves through the community and, rightfully so, leaves Dan with an unrelenting guilt that would follow him for the rest of his life. However, while killing Keith was terrible, it also was far from a simple act of malice.
If Dan is the American Psycho of the family, his big brother, Keith, was Miss Congeniality. Keith was a beloved member of the town, and after Dan abandoned Lucas and his mother, Karen (Moira Kelly), before Lucas was even born, Keith stepped in as a father figure. He ran his humble auto shop with integrity, was a mentor to his nephews, and was just an overall good guy. However, Keith wasn’t without his faults and slept with Deb (Barbara Alyn Woods) a.k.a. Dan’s wife in the Season 1 finale ofOne Tree Hill. Although Dan and Deb were separated at the time, sleeping with your sister-in-law is widely considered to be a no-no. A few months prior to the shooting, Dan was also almost killed by a fire at his dealership, and he believed Keith to be the one who tried to kill him (plot twist, it was actually Deb). For these reasons, we can see thatwhile Keith’s murder is unforgivable, Dan thought that Keith had tried to kill him first, and therefore felt that this was well-deserved revenge.
‘One Tree Hill’ Actually Had Four Finales, But This Is the Best One
9 seasons. 4 “could have been” finales. But there’s one that stands out as the best.
Dan eventually confesses to the murder after framing an innocent teenager, gaslighting half the town, and then trying to weasel his way back into Karen’s life as she carries her and Keith’s baby. As we watch him accept a future behind bars, we are given a rare glimpse into Dan’s vulnerable side as he finally recognizes the weight of his actions and mourns a loss that was entirely his own doing.
Dan Scott Wanted a Better Life for Nathan on ‘One Tree Hill’
Like any good antagonist, Dan neededa solid backstoryin order for us to see how this guy became such a dirtbag. Dan’s origin story at the beginning ofOne Tree Hill(beyond being an absent father living in the shadow of his adored brother) largely revolves around the fact that he would have been a pro basketball player had he not suffered a debilitating knee injury during his freshman year of college. We later learn, however, that this is an elaborate lie by Dan and his mother (Tess Harper) to relieve him of the pressure of a basketball career, a decision that haunts Dan into adulthood. In Season 1, Episode 12, the Scott family patriarch, Royal (Gerald McRaney), shows up at Dan’s house with his wife in tow to celebrate Dan’s birthday and berate him for never going pro. A callous man preoccupied with statistics and status, Dan’s father makes it immediately clear that the nasty apple did not fall far from the obnoxious tree.
During a tense family dinner, it’s revealed to Royal that Dan’s knee injury in college wasn’t actually degenerative and that he wasn’t forced to, but rather chose to quit the game because of how much pressure his father put on him. This moment puts Dan’s questionable decision-making skills on full display as we see howafter his father bullied him, Dan continued the cycle of abuse and passed his trauma onto Nathan. We can also see that in Dan’s own twisted way, he thought he was doing the right thingby saving his sonfrom a lifetime of regret wondering what could have been.
Dan Scott Became One of TV’s Best Anti-Heroes
Even though he did lots of deplorable stuff,Dan Scott did not live a life without consequences. ThroughoutOne Tree Hill, karma comes back to bite Dan in a myriad of bizarre and aggressive ways. He gets kidnapped, tortured, and hit by a car, and in one truly insane act of God,a dog eats the heartintended for his much-needed transplant. Dan wasOne Tree Hill’s resident cockroach, and every time Dan almost died, there was a moment of “It’s what he deserves,” followed by a stronger moment of “Wait… does that mean no more Dan Scott?” Whether we loved him or hated him (or sometimes both) at any given moment, we have to admit that the show would have been far less exciting without Dan.
After confessing to Keith’s murder and spending years in prison, Dan Scott emerges in Season 5 as an apparently reformed man ready to be a devoted grandfather to Nathan’s son, Jamie (Jackson Brundage). Over the next few seasons, he proves that he is trying to be a better man, such as when he rescues Jamie fromCrazy Nannie Carrie (Torrey DeVitto)or convincesHaley’s (Bethany Joy Lenz) sister, Quinn (Shantel VanSanten), not to kill her stalker.In Season 9, when Nathan is kidnapped by members of an underground Russian sports mafia, Dan makes the ultimate sacrifice, taking a bullet to save Nathan’s life and later dying in the hospital. In the episode aptly named “Danny Boy,” Dan is escorted over to the other side by Keith, apparently forgiven for his sins and being allowed into heaven as Keith’s plus one.
As we watched him do all sorts of horrible things onOne Tree Hillwhile wrestling with his feelings of insecurity and guilt, we have to admit that we were alwayskind ofon Team Dan Scott. While he did a lot of bad and could bring out the worst in people, he also had the capacity to push peoples’ compassion to the limit and teach them how to forgive. Through his years-long redemption arc,Dan Scott showed us the ability of people to change for the better, and if nothing else, he made life in Tree Hill a hell of a lot more interesting.
One Tree Hillis available to stream on Hulu and Max in the U.S.
