"I'm sad, Wilfred. I'm really sad."
—Ryan, "Questions"
—Ryan, "Questions"
Wilfred is a delightfully unorthodox comedy about a guy's wacky adventures with his neighbor's dog. Wait, is he trying to commit suicide in the very first episode...?
Warning: Unmarked spoilers ahead!
- Ryan in general. He has a tense relationship with his sister, is estranged from his dad due to his efforts at controlling Ryan's destiny, and his mother has been absent for most of his life due to living in a madhouse. All of these issues add up to the poor guy trying to kill himself, and then experiencing an inability to tell reality from fantasy.
- The episode where Ryan confronts his guilt over accidentally killing his childhood dog Sneakers (he apparently left the gate to the swimming pool open, causing Sneakers to drown to death).
- It turned out to be Kristen's fault, and she breaks down into tears after revealing the truth.
- Ryan's vision of seeing Wilfred (allegedly possessed by Sneaker's ghost) taking on Sneaker's form, and then hugging him tenderly is both tear-jerking and heartwarming at the same time.
- Ryan's and Amanda's breakup at the end of "Truth" really is heartbreaking to watch. Ryan realizes he's not ready to tell her the truth about Wilfred, even though he truly does love her. Amanda's reaction makes it all the worse, as she can't even walk back to her car without falling to her knees crying.
- As quoted above, Ryan's realization at the end of "Questions", complete with a sad gaze at a picture of him and Amanda when they were happy together.
- The end of "Forward" reveals that Amanda was hospitalized for a year after what happened in "Secrets", and that even though she wanted to call Ryan once she got out, she couldn't risk going through the mental hell that their relationship triggered.
- Also, Amanda got a job at a school — but as a janitor. Her future doesn't look very bright.
- Between Seasons 3 and 4, Ryan gets knocked unconscious and has a bad dream, including a part about his dad dying. Many of the events in the dream come true, making them seem like ominous premonitions. Later on, his father does end up dying for real, resulting in Ryan losing the last chance to reconcile with him.
- Wilfred passing away in the penultimate episode. And the pan-out shot revealing not a man in a dog suit, but a regular dog.
- On top of that, the subsequent ending to the episode has Ryan fuming across the beach, angry at the loss of his best friend, thinking back to all the happy times they'd had together over the course of the series. He's truly lost.
- The cause of the heightened anxiety leading to Wilfred's (or Ryan's interpretation of Wilfred's) final lethal seizure? Self-guilt at his inability to sustain Ryan's and Jenna's relationship.
- In the final episode, Ryan has a breakdown upon learning that he really was batshit insane the whole time. "Wilfred" (not the real dog, but the funny man wearing a dog suit) turns out to just be a hallucination.
- There's also some Fridge Horror to go along with that. When Ryan realizes all of the crazy things he was doing with a normal dog named Wilfred, we see that Ryan was just using marijuana by himself, sitting next to Wilfred. This means that it's Ryan's own damn fault that the real Wilfred died of lung cancer, as the poor doggie inhaled so much second-hand smoke.
