That '90s Show Theory Could Change One Character's Origin

Fans on Reddit are attempting to square the somewhat tortured timeline of That '70s Show and That '90s Show by suggesting that maybe Leia, the daughter of Eric Forman and Donna Pinciotti-Forman, might not actually be Eric's daughter. Instead, the suggestion is that she may be the biological daughter of Donna and Randy Pearson, a character brought in to the eighth and final season of That '70s Show after Topher Grace and Ashton Kutcher decided not to return, leaving a vacuum in the friend group at the center of the show. Played by Josh Meyers, the character served briefly as a love interest for Donna while Eric was gone, only to be discarded by the finale, when Eric (and Grace) returned to send the show off and cement Eric and Donna as the central canon couple.

The idea, suggested by Redditor bored_bingewatcher, is that That '90s Show takes place in the summer of 1995, when Leia is turning 15 years old. This implies that she was born during the summer of 1980, which suggests that she was likely conceived during the winter of 1979 -- a period where Eric was in Africa. He only returned on New Year's Eve of 1979/80. Donna's breakup with Randy had come only a couple of episodes before Eric's return, so the theory posits that he is more likely to be the father of a kid who came somewhere between 7 and 9 months after the New Year.

The Randy/Leia theory is part of a larger discussion about how the timelines of That '70s Show and That '90s Show don't actually seem to work. But as one fan points out, all this quibbling about the timelines is a little bit silly, considering that what we're talking about is That '70s Show. Timelines, as hardcore fans know, were never really all that consistent.

"That 70's Show had 5 different Christmas episodes even though the show supposedly takes place over a span of just 2.5 years," noted Redditor LennoxMacDuff94. "Which is to say that the timeline in the original was never very solid, even when they had what should have been milestone events."

This whole conversation is reminiscent of a concern that Mila Kunis has voiced -- which is that based on the age of Jackie and Kelso's kid, it seems as if they may have been cheating on their significant others already by the time That '70s Show was over.

"My husband and I are together in it, which is weird because we shouldn't have been," Kunis said last year. "I called BS. I was like, 'My character would be with Fez.' I think that I ended up with Wilmer's [Valderrama] character. And I was like, 'Why are you and I together?' And also, he was married when '70s ended to Shannon Elizabeth's character, I think. And now we're like, 20 years, no 16 years later, whatever it is, and now [Kelso and I] are married with a kid, and I was like, 'I don't know about this one.'"

You can see That '90s Show on Netflix now.