Fuller House’s Finale Wedding Missed A Big Opportunity For Danny & Stephanie

The Fuller House finale was a missed opportunity for Danny and Stephanie. Netflix’s spin-off ended in May 2020 after five seasons, and in true Full House fashion, the show’s final episode was full of emotional moments for the extended Tanner family. That said, it failed to capitalize on the opportunity to give Danny and his middle child a standout moment.

After the midseason finale, which saw Steve finally proposing to DJ, it was clear that Fuller House season 5 was building toward a triple wedding. By that point, Kimmy and Fernando had long been engaged, deciding to delay getting remarried. Meanwhile, Jimmy had proposed to Stephanie shortly after Danielle was born. Many of the final episodes of Fuller House were devoted to planning the ceremony, with both the grooms and brides going through the motions of preparing to tie the knot. The older cast was, interestingly, barely involved outside of the event itself, but Danny, Jesse, and Joey all played pivotal parts during the actual triple wedding by walking the three girls down the aisle.

Since Fuller House followed the format of its parent series, its lead characters’ (Kimmy, DJ, and Stephanie) personalities and arcs stayed true to their older mirrors (Joey, Danny and Jesse). This is also the reason behind the pairing between Full House‘s main trio and their contemporaries during the series finale. Kimmy and Joey are both the quirky, adopted Tanner family members; DJ and Danny are the old-school, responsible ones; Stephanie and Jesse are the carefree rockers-turned-parents. Based on this logic, the wedding combos made perfect sense, but in terms of the broader narrative, Danny should’ve walked Stephanie down the aisle. Unlike DJ, this was Stephanie’s first and likely last wedding. While Fuller House didn’t reveal much about DJ’s first marriage with her husband, Tommy Sr., Danny didn’t seem to have any issues with his first-born marrying him. Given this, it’s safe to assume that he gave her away during her previous wedding. It would’ve been fair for Stephanie to have had the same experience of her dad walking her down the aisle.

Aside from the fact that Stephanie deserved for Danny to walk her down the aisle since it was her first wedding, it would’ve also been so much more gratifying for fans to see, considering where she was at her life at the start of Fuller House and the journey she’s had throughout the show. The middle Tanner child had no intentions of putting down roots in San Francisco, let alone start her own family. The only reason she temporarily stopped being a globe-trotting musician was to help DJ get back on her feet following the sudden death of her first husband; once her sister got the hang of being a single parent, Stephanie was planning on picking up where her career was left off. Unexpectedly, Stephanie began dating Jimmy, which changed the course of her life.

Even when Stephanie finally decided she wanted her own family, things weren’t easy for the middle Tanner child. Believing she was unable to concieve, she had to go out of her way to have Danielle by choosing Kimmy to be her and Jimmy’s surrogate. By Fuller House season 5, things were finally starting to fall into the right places for Stephanie; seeing her father give her away on her wedding day would’ve been the perfect way to cap off her arc in the Full House spin-off.

While it’s understandable why the writers wanted to keep as much as they could from the original series, it ultimately worked to their disadvantage. Instead of expanding, the show limited itself to what was already familiar as the writers struggled to establish new storytelling. Perhaps it would’ve been better for Fuller House if Stephanie had been the primary character of the show as she had a more interesting storyline. Otherwise, Fuller House should’ve at least gave the character the attention and treatment she deserved on her big wedding day.

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