The I Dream Of Jeannie Plot Line Barbara Eden Thought 'Ruined The Show'

Spoiler alert for anyone who doesn't know how "I Dream of Jeannie" ended: Major Anthony Nelson (aka Tony) and Jeannie get married. The appropriate happily ever after, right? Well, according to Barbara Eden, no. 

In Eden's 2011 memoir "Jeannie Out of the Bottle," she wrote that she'd been immediately opposed to Jeannie and Nelson getting married in the show's last season. "'I Dream of Jeannie's' abiding theme was Jeannie's unrequited love for Major Nelson, his belief that she was just a figment of his imagination, and her stubborn insistence that she was real," she wrote. In light of that, Eden added, "Marrying her to Major Nelson derailed the plot and the series as a whole, and both Larry and I knew it." That was something Eden doubled down on a few years later, when she appeared on "Today." Eden was on the show to celebrate the show's 50th anniversary, but she made it clear once more that the plot line had been all wrong. "She wasn't human! She was an entity. Genies aren't human. Witches are human. Genies are not. And she thought she was, and he knew she wasn't," the actor lamented. All in all, she mused, "I think it broke credibility." 

Eden would continue to talk about it in the years that followed, though she admitted in a 2025 interview with Forbes that she hadn't pushed for the storyline to be changed. "I guess if I had asserted myself, yes, I would have, but I didn't," she said (via People). Still, she did see some upsides to the wedding and pointed out in "Jeannie Out of the Bottle" that even though saying goodbye to her co-stars after the show's cancellation soon after the wedding had been tragic, she was financially secure enough to walk away stress-free. 

Barbara Eden's on-screen husband, Larry Hagman, also made it clear he wasn't on board with Jeannie marrying Major Anthony Nelson. In fact, in "Jeannie Out of the Bottle," Eden wrote of her and Hagman's stance, "We were united in our reaction — sheer disgust — because we both knew that the wedding heralded the end of the show." Sadly, while Eden managed to find the bright side of the situation, enjoying herself the day the wedding scene was filmed and even rationalizing to Forbes many years later that audiences would probably relate to the storyline, Hagman wouldn't budge in his view. On the contrary, she wrote that her and Hagman's relationship deteriorated towards the end of the show because he became reclusive. "He now spent most of his time hiding in his trailer. He flatly refused to talk to me or anyone else. Not the most congenial way in which to co-star in a comedy series," Eden penned. 

Other than Hagman and Eden, another "I Dream of Jeannie" insider upset by the decision for Jeannie and Major Nelson to get hitched was the show's writer and creator, Sidney Sheldon. In his 2005 autobiography "The Other Side of Me," he explained that the head of NBC, Mort Werner, had decided the two get married, and that he wouldn't accept any disagreements on the matter. "The entire cast called Mort Werner, but it was no use. He thought he was smarter than any of them," Sheldon wrote. 

Well, the show was canceled soon after, so it's safe to say that wasn't the case. Still, there's no question that even decades after its cancellation, "I Dream of Jeannie" continues to delight audiences, plot hole and all.