The “Why Aren’t People Writing Wilson Character Analyses” Analysis
When you ask someone who their favorite House M.D character is, there are three incredibly common answers: House, Wilson, and Chase. All three of these answers make sense; House is the protagonist, Wilson is the best friend to that protagonist, and Chase is one of the original deuteragonist's with the saddest, most fleshed out backstory. While, of course, there are political, societal reasons that these three are the common favorites—all three of them are white men, who we have been conditioned into feeling more empathy for than their non-white, non-male counterparts; Wilson and Chase are both able bodied and conventionally attractive; House, while disabled, is the protagonist, making him far more sympathetic than he would be otherwise—there are just as many solid, textual reasons for this happening, including how the show itself handles the other characters. I am not making this post on a high horse; I got into House because of Chase-centric fanfiction, and Wilson is my current favorite character in the cast. But it has got me to think about something… odd, with these three characters, particularly in the fandom.
House, being the main character, is an infinitely interesting character to dissect. We follow his perspective for most of the episodes, and understand (or are made to think about) the decisions he makes on a more intricate level than most of the other characters. We know far more about Chase and his backstory than we do almost everyone else, and he’s around on and off for a majority for the series, so of course people will pull apart the things he does and why he does them. While I am upset that these two get far more attention than some of the other people in the cast, I get it. I understand why there are so many people out there talking about House or Chase and why they were written the way they were.
But do you know who I don’t see getting these character analyses written about them (at least on Tumblr)? Wilson. If they exist, they are very few and far between, and are never enjoyed enough to show up on my dash. This to me, is very, very interesting. It’s not for a lack of content, a lack of things to talk about when it comes to Wilson; I have gone on multi hour long rants and tangents to my friends about his character, about the things he does and why he does them. And neither is it for a lack of people interested; he is one of the most popular characters in the show, after all. So why is this? Why do people not talk about Wilson?
To me, the answer is obvious: because Wilson is seen as accessory to House, both by the show itself and the fandom.
Of course, every character in House is seen in a similar light; everyone has some sort of connection to House, and since we rarely ever follow a perspective that isn’t his own, we really only see them the way House sees them. But with Wilson, it’s far more apparent. There’s a reason I, despite his importance to the narrative, described him as the “best friend to the protagonist” rather than the solo descriptions I gave House and Chase.
There are so, so many episodes and plots surrounding him and his life in comparison to the rest of the cast—a large portion of the Tritter arc in s3, the end of s4, s5ep17, s6ep10, the latter chunk of s6, etc.—and yet we still know so, so little about him as a person. Cuddy, while having a somewhat mysterious backstory throughout a large portion of the series, is a character we become incredibly familiar with familial-wise during the House/Cuddy arc, and we also follow her life adopting and taking care of Rachel as well as her relationship with Lucas in seasons 5 and 6. We meet Chase’s father; get two whole episodes surrounding him, and learn about his mother and his sister, his life in seminary, his love life with Cameron, etc. We see Foreman’s mother, father, and brother multiple times throughout the series, and he, like Chase, has a whole arc surrounding his relationship with Thirteen. We meet Kutner’s parents following his passing, and Thirteen’s parents are often alluded too—hell, Taub has entire episodes centering around his personal relationships. Sure, we see Wilson’s relationships with Amber and Sam, we meet Bonnie in s3, and we learn about Danny throughout the series. But his unnamed parents and his unnamed brother, or any friends he may have outside Tucker (who we only meet because he’s relevant to a medical case, in the episode that centers Wilson)? We know nothing about them.
And this lack of knowledge, in part, is why I believe Wilson is treated the way he is by the fandom: as accessory to House. I can name on two, maybe three hand the number of Wilson-centric fics I’ve read (as someone who has read maybe over a thousand House M.D fics at this point) that don’t have House actively in the narrative. The only ones in that list that don’t mention House are the ones where Wilson is too young to know who he is. With fanart, it’s a lot easier to draw just Wilson on his own, but the moment he’s put in a scene with another character, 9 out of 10 times it’ll be House. And this is, in and of itself, not a fault of the fans, or even a fault at all; but this insistence on including House in everything Wilson does, in everything Wilson is, has become a problem.
There are many, many pieces of fanfiction that center around Wilson and his issues (in part to patch the fact that the show almost never addresses them) but I’ve noticed that so many of them always wrap back around to House at the end—usually with the two getting together romantically. Which leads me to the second part of my hypothesis as to why Wilson is treated the way he is in fandom spaces: House/Wilson. As someone who has written works surrounding this ship and has actively talked about it ad nauseam to people, I am not bringing it up to bash it. I love Hilson. But I’ve also had direct conversations with people about this show, trying to talk about its contents, only for them to tell me they’re not watching the show for the medical content, or for the direct premise itself; they’re watching it for Hilson. They skip scenes; episodes; entire arcs and plot points, just to see the dynamic House and Wilson have. And that, to me, shows exactly why Wilson is treated the way he is: he’s not his own character with his own agency in a narrative, but the less interesting, less important, pretty boy half in a hollow “old man yaoi” carcass, devoid of plot or importance.
To the fandom, Wilson doesn’t really matter. He’s pretty and he’s tragic, but there’s no reason to think about why he’s tragic or what it means for the narrative, what it means for him and his actions. The only traits people care about are the fact he’s attractive, he’s attentive, and he loves House. Why would we need to treat him like his own character?