‘Off Campus’: 14 Biggest Book-to-Show Changes in Season 1
What To Know
- Off Campus is based on Elle Kennedy’s bestselling book series.
- The first season primarily focused on Hannah and Garrett’s love story, which is the center of The Deal.
- The show also incorporated elements of The Score in the first season and made some notable changes to the book.
We’ve had years to sit with (translation: obsess over) Elle Kennedy’s Off Campus books, so you already know that we’ve been cataloging all the ways Prime Video’s Off Campus Season 1 differs from 2015’s The Deal, which charts the romance between Hannah Wells (Ella Bright) and Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli).
“There are certain things that have to change because we don’t have the benefit of being inside the characters’ heads the way you do in a novel,” showrunner Louisa Levy explained to Swooon. “So, our North Star was always, ‘Does it feel like it honors the books?’ And whenever the answer was yes, we felt like that was the right choice.”
Keep scrolling for the major book-to-screen differences we spotted in Season 1, including Logan’s new family member (Antonio Cipriano), the adjustment to the fan-favorite campus hands-off law, and more. (Warning: Spoilers for Off Campus Season 1 below.)
Justin being a musician
In The Deal, music major Hannah agrees to fake date hockey player Garrett to make her crush jealous. The show follows suit, though with one major difference: Justin (Josh Heuston) isn’t a football player. They’ve made him a musician, like Hannah, instead.
Levy explained the reason for the switch-up in an interview with Teen Vogue. She wanted Hannah’s type to be “artsy guys,” highlighting that “Garrett is not the person she had on the agenda for herself.” Further, Hannah is “not a fully realized singer-songwriter yet, and part of what she’s crushing on with Justin is … she wants to be able to do what he does. So it allowed us, yet again, to externalize what is internal.” (We approve of this change, in case you were curious. It makes total sense.)
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Justin helping Hannah with her songwriting is another shift. In the book, Hannah partners with a classmate named Cass for the pop showcase, but he drops her shortly before their performance.
Hannah’s part-time jobs
In the book, Hannah is a waitress at a ’50s-themed diner called Della’s. In the show, Hannah has two part-time jobs: She works at Briar U hockey rink, and that’s actually where she has a locker room meet-cute with Garrett, which is another change from the book. She also works at Malone’s, which was originally a bar that the hockey guys frequent. The show has turned Malone’s into a restaurant that employs both Hannah and Allie (Mika Abdalla). (RIP, Della’s, but we’re living for these changes.)
Tucker and Dean’s ages
Tucker (Jalen Thomas Brooks) is a sophomore instead of a senior. “He’s the oldest in the books, and he’s the youngest in our series,” Levy said. “That’s just because his [story] is the fourth book, and we want to make sure he’s still in college by the time we get there. We don’t want to be forced to overlap timelines in the same way if that doesn’t make sense for us. We want to keep driving the story forward, and we don’t want to be limited in that regard.”
That means, if the roster is accurate, Dean Di Laurentis (Stephen Kalyn) has been aged up to a senior instead of a junior. (Does that mean he’ll be the star of Season 2, we wonder, even though his book comes third in the series? TBD.)
Hannah losing her scholarship and entering the pop showcase
In the book, Hannah doesn’t have as much to lose with the pop showcase. She enters because the extra money will be helpful, but in the show, her future at Briar U is on the line if she doesn’t win. Plus, unlike the show, Hannah wants to be a pop artist and doesn’t struggle as much with writer’s block in the book.
Logan’s younger sibling and The Fifth Line
The Mistake readers know that book Logan has an older brother, Jeff, who runs their family’s mechanic shop. They have an alcoholic father who crushed both of his legs in a car accident. Logan made a deal with his older brother: Jeff dropped out of college to manage the shop and take care of their dad, allowing Logan to get his degree. They’d switch once Logan graduated.
Liane Hentscher / Prime
The show has switched things up in regard to Logan’s family. Though he has an older brother off-screen, he also has a younger sibling at Briar U, Jules (Julia Sarah Stone). Jules runs a Briar U gossip blog called The Fifth Line, which is also original to the show. They also have an alcoholic mother, rather than a father, who has checked herself into rehab in Season 1.
Hannah kissing Logan instead of Dean
A fan-favorite book scene is when Garrett and Hannah decide to practice kissing to make their dating ruse more convincing. In the book, Dean walks in on them making out in Garrett’s bedroom. When Hannah explains that Garrett’s just helping her brush up on her kissing skills, Dean calls her bluff and offers to help, too. Hannah plants a kiss on Dean, leaving him stunned.
The show moves the kissing practice scene to the hockey team’s weight room, where Logan walks in on them instead. He gets the kiss, definitely contributing to his crush on Hannah (which he also has in the books).
Beau’s presence
Beau (Khobe Clarke) gets way more to do in Season 1 compared to The Deal. In the book, he pretty much only appears briefly at his own birthday party. The show has made Beau and Dean childhood friends, rather than friends who met in college.
Liane Hentscher / Prime
Their joint costume birthday party isn’t in the book. Neither is his sister, Joanna (Lauren Patten), filming a self-tape with Allie and taking Allie out to an off-campus bar.
Drunk Shakespeare
That entire Drunk Shakespeare sequence in Episode 4 is entirely original to the show. It adds to the love triangle drama between Hannah, Justin, and Garrett by getting them all on stage together, so we’re here for it! Not to mention, we got Allie’s iconic breakup monologue out of it.
Liane Hentscher / Prime
Hannah’s rapist is a hockey player
In the book, the boy who raped Hannah in high school never appears. Instead, Hannah runs into one of his friends, Rob Delaney, who lied in court for him. The show has made Delaney (Quinten James) the rapist and a hockey player from a rival school, pitting him against Garrett and Briar U. In both cases, Garrett beats up Delaney when they come face-to-face for what he did to Hannah.
Garrett breaks up with Hannah
In Episode 7, Garrett breaks up with Hannah. After she tells Garrett that he “scared” her when he fought Delaney, Garrett thinks he isn’t good for Hannah. He’s afraid that he’s becoming like his abusive father (Steve Howey). In the book, their third-act breakup comes about because of Phil Graham, who thinks Hannah is distracting Garrett from hockey. Phil threatens to cut his son off if Hannah doesn’t break up with him, so she does.
The consequences of the fight
After the Delaney fight in the book, Garrett doesn’t face any major repercussions. Hannah gives Garrett permission to tell his coach about her past, so he doesn’t get kicked off the hockey team. In the show, Garrett is brought before the NCAA. He’s suspended for a few games, and the committee, which looked into Garrett’s social media, noticed that he posted a video of himself practicing with the Boston Bruins. College students aren’t allowed to play professionally, so the Hawks are forced to forfeit all of their wins from the season so far.
Dean and Allie’s romance timeline
Though some of Kennedy’s books — and different couples’ romances — overlap timelines, Dean and Allie’s secret hookups start while Hannah and Garrett fall in love, which is unique to the show. Hannah and Garrett are an established couple when Dean and Allie interact for the first time in The Score, on the heels of her breakup from Sean. That costume party dance moment? Totally new.
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The campus-wide hands-off law
In the book, Garrett suspects there’s more to Hannah breaking up with him than she’s letting on. He tries to convince her to resume their relationship, even evoking a campus-wide hands-off law on Hannah. Hannah, furious, confronts Garrett in his locker room. Eventually, Hannah reveals the truth about Phil’s threat, and she and Garrett get back together.
In Episode 8, a rumor goes around about the hands-off law. But when Hannah storms into the locker room, Garrett is totally confused. It turns out it was just a rumor that his younger teammates mistakenly started. Hannah and Garrett don’t immediately get back together after their locker room conversation, either, saving that for after the pop showcase.
Hunter Davenport
Everything related to Hunter (Charlie Evans) in the show is a total deviation from the books. That meet-cute and kiss with Allie in the bar? New. Hunter’s beef with Dean over something that happened with Dean’s sister? New. Hunter and Allie’s hookup? MAJOR new addition.
In the books, Hunter is introduced in The Mistake. He’s a younger player on Briar University’s hockey team, but he’s one of the standout stars. Dean offers to do one-on-one practice sessions with Hunter in The Score, which occur throughout the rest of the book. There’s zero drama involved, and they establish a mentor-mentee dynamic.
Hunter becomes a main character in Kennedy’s Briar U spinoff series. In the first book, The Chase, Dean’s sister gets a romance. Summer falls for Fitz, Hunter’s teammate and roommate. Hunter starts crushing on Summer, but he eventually moves on and starts a romance with someone else in his own book, The Play.
What are your thoughts on the book-to-show changes? Sound off in the comments section below!
Off Campus, Season 1, Streaming Now, Prime Video
