User blog comment:Corbierr/Characters as Story Devices (A Deeper Look Into Those Affected By THE PLOT)/@comment-25014978-20140812204902/@comment-4816103-20140812212149

I didn't know they cut Joy out. Maybe you have a good point- they probably were trying to make her relevent to the story without shoehorning her in, but it backfired. And season 3, well, uh, yeah... And since Patricia was meant to leave, they probably had to just come up with shit for her to do too. And so on, and so on, same with Mara...

Very interesting to think about. I've never taken the other versions into account when thinking about this.