Friends was a successful sitcom series on the NBC broadcast network, which throughout its 10 seasons showed how complicated life can be for a group of friends in their twenties who are struggling to figure out how to stand out in their jobs, while remaining aside relationships, family conflicts and the need to belong without losing their essence.
In Friends, fans met Monica Geller (Courteney Cox), Rachel Green (Jennifer Aniston), Chandler Bing (Matthew Perry), Joey Tribbiani (Matt LeBlanc), Phoebe Buffay (Lisa Kudrow) and Ross Geller (David Schwimmer), six friends that despite everything that may be happening in their lives, they support each other and choose to turn their circle into a true family.
The successful NBC series also arcs of other important characters that came to make a mark on the incredible history of Friends, as one of the most watched series on American television. One of those characters is Ben (Cole Sprouse), the irreverent son of Ross Geller with his first wife Carol Willick (Anita Barone / Jane Sibbett), who for 8 seasons made all fans of the series laugh with quips.
However, this character was dramatically removed from the last few seasons of Friends with no apparent explanation, leaving many fans in doubt who still want an answer to what happened to Ben in the plot of the sitcom. NBC.
In the absence of any clarification, fans have speculated on Reddit since 2016 about Ben’s disappearance from the show. There a viewer insinuated that Carol had taken custody of Ben from Ross for erratic and childish behavior that led him to marry and divorce many times, and for which he even lost his much-loved job at the Museum.
But the theory lost strength because the same fans consider that a conflict of this size should necessarily have been reflected in the plot of the series, something that of course never happened. Therefore, they decided to move their speculations to a moment in season 8, in the episode “The One Where Rachel Has a Baby”, when Rachel is in the same hospital with Janice, Chandler’s ex-girlfriend, facing her labor. at the same time as her.
In the episode, Janice comments that her first daughter barely sees her father because he has a new wife and family. “I’m lucky if my daughter gets to spend the weekend with her dad and her twins and little Mrs. New Tits,” says the character as she is visibly shaken by labor. Although Janice was speaking from her own experience, according to fans this could explain what happened with Ben because he also saw Ross regularly until Rachel got pregnant, and then she inexplicably disappeared.
Ben was last seen in Friends season 8 episode 12. Ross finds out about the pregnancy about six episodes earlier. Although the answer will never be forthcoming, the abandonment theory seems more likely than the one that Carol took Ben away from Ross. Some fans argue that Janice’s speech could have been a well-placed but subtle clue.
