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What Happened to Virginia ‘Ginny’ Walton on ‘The Waltons’? Why Character Disappeared
From 1972 to 1981, CBS aired The Waltons, the historical drama centered around a Virginia-based family during the Great Depression. The success of the series also sparked several reunion movies, all of which raised questions about the fate of one character in particular — Virginia “Ginny” Walton. Scroll below for details on what happened to Ginny on the show.
What Happened to Virginia ‘Ginny’ Walton on ‘The Waltons’?
Ginny was first introduced to the audience during season 8 of the series as the daughter of Ben and Cindy Walton. She appeared as a baby throughout her first season on The Waltons and as a toddler in season 9. The onscreen couple also had a son, Charles Benjamin “Charlie” Walton, making Ginny an older sister.
The tot made an appearance in the 1982 spinoff film Mother’s Day on Walton’s Mountain. In the fourth TV film, A Walton Thanksgiving Reunion, Ginny did not appear at all. Instead, Ben and Cindy’s characters made a brief mention that Ginny had died two years prior. They did not give further details about their eldest child’s passing, per IMDb.
The film, set in 1963, was released in 1993, meaning Ginny’s character would have been around 17 years old at the time of her death. Her disappearance from the show still remains a mystery. In recent years, fans have continued to speculate what actually happened to her as the show has been made available to stream on Amazon Prime.
She isn’t the only character who was completely written out of the series with hardly any explanation. The character of Charlie was also axed from the show after only one appearance during Mother’s Day on Walton’s Mountain.
Another character who disappeared from the franchise was John Curtis Willard, the first child of Mary Ellen and Curtis Willard. The character was played by twins Michael and Marshall Reed throughout the seasons. Despite John Curtis’ importance to the plot, he did not join the cast in the last few reunion movies.
Why Did Several Characters Disappear From ‘The Waltons’?
The last film, A Walton Easter, aired in 1997 and was set in the year 1969. Still, many wondered why so many key personalities from the show were missing from the cast.
“The question has been raised about what happened to John Curtis in the reunion movies, and as I have said before, for some reason – and I’m not sure all the reasons behind it, how much of it was budgetary,” Judy Norton, who played Mary Ellen, once shared in a YouTube video, per Outsider. “You know they only have so much budget when they’re doing something. And, of course, the priority is to have all the original cast members back. So, all of the original Walton children and John-Boy, and Momma, and Daddy, and Ellen when she was able to. So, those would have been the first priorities for the budget.”
She also reflected on the decision of the writers to not include some of the children in the movie scripts.
“Children are always more challenging just because of the restrictions of time and having to have teachers on set,” she continued. “So, I think there may have been some things with that where they just went, ‘Oh, you know it’s a lot of children to deal with. So, we’ll just sort of fudge that.’”
