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Luke Perry will always be Beverly Hills, 90210’s Dylan McKay

The fact that the words “I’m not in a good mood today. In fact, I’m feeling a little hostile” are amongst Dylan McKay’s first words on Beverly Hills, 90210 seems pretty poignant for fans of Luke Perry right now.

The actor, who famously starred as the impossibly cool Dylan on the 90s teen drama, died on Monday, March 4 at the age of 52 after suffering a massive stroke late last week, just a day after Fox announced a reboot of the show. (Perry was not signed on to reprise his role.)

It always seems implausible when someone so famous for their youth dies before their time, especially in the case of Perry, who faced mortality so many times in character on 90210.

Dylan was the son of a millionaire with a vintage Porsche and a hotel room as his permanent residence. He embodied the heartthrob trifecta: brooding, unwaveringly sexy, with a soft side. And as such, he was the centre of much love and lust across the show’s 10 seasons. (Perry opted out of seasons seven and eight, yet his presence loomed large). First Brenda, then Kelly, then a love triangle ensued. And so on and so forth until he found Antonia (a young Rebecca Gayheart), who would ultimately die at the hands of her father in a mafia hit gone wrong. (“What I would do to go out with Dylan McKay,” Kelly famously lamented back in season one).

Beverly Hills, 90210 followed a group of privileged high schoolers on a wild ride through life in Los Angeles’s richest zip code. The show made its stars – Jason Priestley, Shannen Doherty, Tori Spelling, Jennie Garth, Brian Austin Green, Gabrielle Carteris and Perry – household names, with its decade-long run (1990-2000) of sunshine and melodrama. Perry among them was a shining example of what the tiniest bit of edge will do to a nation of horny teen girls.

Dylan’s surprisingly deep set of forehead wrinkles only seemed to add to his appeal. The actor was 24 in the show’s first season, yet he looked weathered and complicated – just the kind of man who’d conflate his stash of Byron books with endless bottles of liquor and allude to a troubled past at the ripe old age of 16. He was James Dean, but one better. Every so often he would let you see how vulnerable he was. Plus, he surfed.

I was way too young to be watching when 90210 debuted in 1990, but it didn’t stop me from sliding onto the floor in my parents’ room to watch it with my sister. Dylan was her type and so he quickly became mine, even though I was only five years old. When I re-watched the show a few years back, I was so struck by his one-liners. My favourite, “May the bridges I burn light the way,” was later made into a sweatshirt by the high-fashion label Vetements, cementing his icon status in the meme era.

In an era of examining toxic masculinity, Perry’s archetypal bad boy is a worthy one to revisit. He was woke before it was a commodity. Case in point, his commentary on date rape is seared in my memory.

Dylan: Can I say something? I mean, I know the last thing you need right now is another guy telling you what to do or what to think.

Kelly: Go ahead, please.

Dylan: You’re blaming yourself for leading that guy on, but I want you to know as a guy it doesn’t matter how much of a magnet a girl turns on. A guy always has a choice of not making her do something she doesn’t want to do.

Kelly: I didn’t make that choice very easy, now did I?

Dylan: Yeah, you did. You said no.

Perry wasn’t just about 90210, of course. In 1992, he starred as another heroic bad boy in the original Buffy The Vampire Slayer film. Through the decade, he guested on episodes of The Simpsons, Will & Grace, Spin City and, in 2001, starred in the HBO prison drama Oz. Most recently, he played Archie’s father, Fred Andrews, on the CW series Riverdale, alongside a cast of rebooted 90s stars (the show halted production following Perry’s death). Like McKay, Andrews throws punches and gets shot. A new generation will discover what it feels like to see Perry walking wounded through the first few seasons of the show.

He’ll always be Dylan though, which is a fact he didn’t seem to fight. “I’m going to be linked with him until I die, but that’s actually just fine. I created Dylan McKay. He’s mine.”

@randibergman

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