I don’t think I’ll ever not be annoyed at how girl meets world treated Maya. Welcome to my rant on why Maya Penelope Hart (Hunter) deserved so much more.

(Also, let me just say, I work in this industry and I do get that you can’t have the best friend eclipse the main character but they were such equals it could have been let by. My girl was done dirty. )
(Ps all the gifs are from tumblr’s collection, all credit goes to their original makers)
The whole ‘Maya turning into Riley’ thing was absolute BS. That’s what I’m most mad at.
Riley and all the Matthews said for years all they wanted for Maya was to be happy and have hope and motivation to achieve her potential.
But the second she’s doing that, and isn’t the sad lonely best friend who they can use to all feel better about themselves by pittying?
She’s supposedly morphed into Riley.
She’s a teenage girl she’s not meant to know who she is. Life’s changing. She’s changing.
What did Riley represent? Hope. Happiness. Things people just weren’t used to seeing in Maya.
Girl meets upstate was all about how the day Shawn bought Maya all her new clothes she somehow changed.
I’m sorry?!?!
Did we just all forget how happy she was? How Cory told her in class the hope on her face is what looks so good? How she truly learned what hope was? How she finally got her dream come true with Shawn and her Mom? I mean look at her face. Pure joy. She’d been through a lifetime of pain and anger and heartbreak and awful circumstances.
And then, remember when she went to high school and got her first A? How happy she was to have it so proudly up on the Matthew’s fridge? When she found out all her past failings didn’t count and this track could get her to a college - a way out of the life she had lived?
For them to destroy that in her, to force her back into the depressed, lonely shell of who she used to be, which not only obliterated her confidence but probably ruined her future prospects as well all because they had to cater to Riley’s perfect little world that she’s at the centre of? Maya deserved more.
I mean Riley pretty much told Maya she can’t possibly like a nice boy as she is because she’s got too miserable if an existence. Riley obviously hasn’t come across ✨daddy issues✨yet.
OBVIOUSLY she wants a nice boy. Her dad was a ‘bad boy’, and he was the first man to break her poor tiny heart.
Then there’s Lucas. Girl meets ski lodge was so unbelievably disappointing.
Not to mention the gross Josh thing. Dude was in college, she was 15. Really Disney?! How can there be just under three years between them when he’s in college and she was in middle school. It was so freaking gross.
Also josh with all his wisdom and observations about this being some subconscious scheme to protect Riley - acting like he knows Maya and Lucas better than anyone else, even themselves. He saw them interacting like twice? And Maya is the queen of masking what she really feels when it comes to being legitimately vulnerable.
I truly fully believe that in gm upstate Lucas had picked Maya. There’s no other way that episode makes sense to me. I saw a tumblr post that said watch it twice - once thinking he picks Riley and the other with Maya, and only Maya makes sense - and they’re right. But I think Lucas knew that Riley’s emotional immaturity meant that if they wanted to keep the friend group together, there was no other choice. Maya is used to heartbreak, she could handle it and Riley couldn’t. That’s why I’m sure she pushed him to Riley. They had this moment (captured below) where they both just resigned themselves to a fate of longing for the other but never having it.
But he asked her why she dumped the smoothie on his head. What was she going to say, “because with her you might have to be some Mr Perfect all the time but with me you only have to be your messy, imperfect self and you tried to recycle the same thing you told Riley on me so I humbled you back down” while Riley was sat right there?!
Riley’s reaction when she found out about Lucas’ past in texas shows how she truly only loved the fantasy of him. She wanted Cory and topanga and to be honest anyone could fill that role as long as she was the other one in it. But she couldn’t just accept that there was something that made him not perfect. That the world wasn’t just black and white.
Maya let’s him be himself. She has no expectations of him. She understands everyone has flaws and accepts him for his.
Plus the way he predicts her moves, catching her before she tries to chase farkle or the hand thing in science class. You know when you know someone so well it’s like they’re a part of you? Yeah, they know it too.
They can be imperfect together, and they both felt that ease and comfort. I honest think that’s why he lets her call him so many names. It’s their own affection. Others don’t have to get it for them to feel it. It’s a familiarity - a fondness.
Not to mention him calling Zay back home and calling her the blonde beauty.
Maya constantly gave up her own happiness for Riley, and I truly wish she didn’t, because Riley wouldn’t do the same for her.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Riley thinks she would, but she hasn’t got enough experience of the world to know what that commitment means. Maybe the protect Riley committee was actually harming her in that way. She was shielded too much.
To reduce Maya as a human being who was growing up, who was a normal teenager who was unsure of her identity and self worth, and boil it down to the claim she can’t be happy, or work hard, or be smart, or hopeful unless she’s copying Riley is so selfish. She deserves that growth too. She deserves that happiness. And that’s one of the many reasons that even when I love them as a pair, their friendship could get really toxic when she went too ‘full on Riley’.
It literally demeaned mayas entire humanity, so of course she backed down without telling Lucas how she really felt. She felt broken. She felt lost.
I think she wanted him to fight for her in gm upstate, not that she’d ever say that out loud. He was so passionate when Maya nearly lost art class, I think all she’d want is for him to stand up to absolutely everyone else in her life and say that she’s allowed to be both Maya and happy. He looked gutted when she said he picked Riley either way.
The people she was meant to love and trust took it too far and forced her to undo everything she works for and was happy because of. And waiting for her volcano eruption:
I mean Riley really genuinely thought that Maya would steal from her moms work place?! After every money trouble Katy and Maya went through, Riley really disrespected Maya THAT much?!?
She was told by everyone around her she couldn’t be Maya and be happy, so she pushed away the one guy who’s always met her toe to toe, always challenged her, always defended her and fought for her, always understood her.
It broke her heart. But it wasn’t Lucas who really broke her heart, it was Riley. For never letting go of the fantasy. And also, if farkle cared about Maya as much as he did Riley he wouldn’t have said anything on NYE. Maya deserves happiness, but they’re all so used to seeing her unhappy they think it’s normal and okay to keep her that way so they can grow around her and use her as a spring board for their personality growth.
The fake stories both girls told of what the future would look like for each of them wasn’t what Maya was really thinking. Because Maya feels safe in very very few places, and his arms is one of those. She wouldn’t ‘rather argue with him than save the world’ with him, she’d just hide all her fear and vulnerability until she was alone.
And I don’t believe Riley or the matthews was a safe space for her anymore - because they took her and shaped her and let her flourish - and then intentionally crushed her. I think it’s a good thing she had her mom and Shawn more after that. Because the matthews didn’t want two ‘identical daughters’, so they made an already impressionable Maya back into the sad girl they used to feed.
I’m so mad on mayas behalf. I know she’s not real but I think, as one of the kinds of people who always constantly lets my happiness be trodden on and broken down so those I love can be happy, I’m finally seeing how much the world could offer if for once people like Maya and I let our happiness matter just as much as other peoples.
Like a best friend like Riley who can’t handle the idea that something not be perfect. The world had to revolve around Riley, but sometimes being the best friend in everyone else’s main character story sucks.
Maya lost her happiness and her hope and her motivation to be the best version of herself all because Riley was selfish and kinda toxic, and everyone else went along with it. Riley had to be the centre of everyone’s world, she couldn’t possibly imagine anyone else being happy. This isn’t even just about how we were so robbed of Lucaya, the whole girl meets upstate ep spent the entire episode disparaging and undoing one of the most beautiful episodes of giving a girl who had been through the mill some actual hope. Gm hurricane was when Maya learned that life could be beautiful. Gm upstate taught her that it was all a fever dream and she can’t have good things. She can’t have aspirations, or a popular sense of fashion, or hope, or happiness.
And I hate that. So much.
Maya Penelope Hart (Hunter) deserved so much better than season 3 gave her.
