As Modern Family’s child characters grow up, Robyn Bahr talks about what problems this may pose for the series:
For Modern Family to make it to seven, even five season, the kids — who are just as important players as the adults — will be well into their early adulthood. Rebellious teen Haley Dunphy will be in her twenties by then (as actress Sarah Hyland nears her thirties.) Her precocious, overachieving tween sister Alex (Ariel Winter) will be already be in college and adorably dim younger brother Luke (Nolan Gould) will be close to graduating high school (hopefully, that is). While it’s easy to imagine how the writers may work around the maturation of the Dunphy kids, it’s harder to project how they will be able progress Rico Rodriguez’s Manny Delgado — an old soul trapped in the body of a twelve-year-old boy — when the dichotomy between his flourishing, romantic nature and husky boyishness diminishes. (At worse, I fear he may come to resemble a sitcom version of Oscar Wao.)