Modern Family Failed Haley's Story - Here's Whose Ending She Should Have Gotten
"Modern Family" fashionista Haley Dunphy (Sarah Hyland) is perhaps the wildest of the many off-the-wall children to decorate the Pritchett-Dunphy-Delgado family tree. Though she has a good heart, her party-hearty influencer lifestyle often gets between her and her desire for respect and maturity. She doesn't want to be seen as the Dunphy family screw-up, especially when compared to high-achieving sister Alex (Ariel Winter).
Which makes the ending the show chose to give her — putting her back with her rebellious-but-now-tamed boyfriend from her teen years, Dylan (Reid Ewing), a shotgun wedding, and twins — is a disservice to both Haley and girls like her, who manage to carve out fine lives for themselves that don't involve minivans.
The show did a much better job with Alex, who grows socially as she attends college, then finally leaves the nest to live in Switzerland as a research assistant. The part about her dating Haley's ex after years of dwelling in her more popular sister's shadow... well, the less said about that, the better. But it's still a much better ending than what the show saddled Haley with.
Anchored down with twins, living in her uncles' house, building a future on the crumbs that her family has moved on from — it feels as if she's living on scraps instead of thriving. The viewer knows it's supposed to feel like an echo of Phil (Ty Burrell) and Claire's (Julie Bowen) happy beginnings, but it just feels like they caged Haley instead of freeing her from her self-doubt.
Modern Family's Haley was never meant for a staid life
There is one true tragedy connected to Haley Dunphy's existence: she suffers from what fans of "King of the Hill" wil know as Luanne Platter Syndrome. That is, she is a young, socially popular, less-than-bright teenager who seems to be destined for something more interesting than academia, who undergoes a great amount of emotional growth and change after receiving some hard knocks from life... and then abruptly loses all of the independence and character growth she's earned, right at the end.
Becoming immature and irresponsible once again, Haley — like Luanne — regresses back into the person she was during the show's first season. The audience is told this is happiness, even though it flies in the face of the story the show had been telling with the character until that point.
With that in mind, it's hard to think of Haley's ultimate decision to marry Dylan and go through with her pregnancy as anything other than just another bad choice she's made out of impulsivity. Dylan, her "romantic safety net," is available, there and seemingly changed for the better, complete with a responsible job as a nurse. The problem? At bare minimum, Haley deserves to be with someone who thrills her, not the backup guy who was always just good enough, or the same guy who once serenaded her in front of their family with an explicit song about their romantic encounters. Her little cousin Lily (Aubrey Anderson-Emmons) rightfully sees him as a sponge, as does Claire. No matter how hard the show works to convince us that Dylan and Haley are soulmates, all of the evidence stands in stark contrast to the claim.
Modern Family's Alex was allowed to grow up, without losing her snarky spark
Compare and contrast Haley's arc to how Alex changed when she was allowed to go off to college by herself. Introverted and filled with intellectual superiority throughout the show, Alex could be icy, prickly, and generally hard to get along with in her youth. Ultimately, this was shown to be a symptom of her social insecurity. When she hits college, then, her problem stands opposite to Haley's: she has to learn how to let go and have fun, to date more frequently, and balance her college career with her real life.
This ultimately does happen, with Alex finally ending up in two stable relationships — even though one is with Haley's former professor, which is still an icky prospect, but nonetheless works out for her. She also remains academically successful and ends up in a real profession. When we leave Haley — even though she's a mother in a happy marriage who has a job, however temporary that job proves to be, and a new house to look after — it's hard not to look at the ending Alex got and wonder why this kind of conclusion wasn't considered for Haley, after her season-long search for responsibility and individual identity.
Why Haley's ending on Modern Family was atrocious
On the career front, the show came achingly close to allowing Haley victories — only to snatch them from her at the last minute. First, she was expelled from college, resulting in her working with Phil's real estate agency. She spends time designing looks for a fashion design company, a position she desperately claws to get, and one she's very proud of keeping. But that finishes abruptly, and once more Haley ends up with a "less-than" ending. Her last job position, besides being a wife and mother who does not take well to being a stay-at-home mom, was for the extremely obvious snake oil merchants NERP.
NERP allows Haley to become a style editor, the kind of job she's been angling for since she was a teenager, but NERP sells dangerous products that cause women to become violently ill and are functionally useless. This flushes all of the development Haley earned in her post-collegiate life, where she comes to understand her own value. While it's a clear spoof of every influencer who tried to foist Tummy Tea on young Instagram followers, it's an act that causes Haley to lose the empathy for others that she developed during her post-Dylan relationship.
Here's the kind of ending Haley should have had on Modern Family
While giving Haley Alex's exact ending would have been a ludicrous idea — Haley would hate wearing a lab coat for money — there's definitely a way the show could have taken cues from Alex's ending and used them to make Haley's better. It wasn't, for instance, particularly necessary for her to have twins, or for her to commit to any one man. The show had already successfully marked her movement into adulthood when she became a fashion designer. And if she had to get in a serious endgame relationship, perhaps she could have personally changed in a realistic way to make her marriage to Dylan make more sense. The marriage, as it was, showed nothing but regression for both characters.
The entire business with NERP could have been a couple of episodes, for instance, instead of the sum total of Haley's career choices. Why not keep her in the fashion scope, and send her to Paris to study design? Why not have her jump to another company that respects her ideas? Anything's better than having her spend time trying to convince high school students to buy $1,000 socks made from wool produced by sheep which only ate sushi.
Perhaps someday Haley will get to have a happy ending – the show's producers, after all, intentionally made sure that the final episode left the series wide open – but until then, her last appearance strikes something of a sour note.