"Every generation just gets the teen idols that it gets. But we were so lucky to get Dylan McKay and Luke Perry!"

Slate

So says Willa Paskin, who paid tribute to the late Beverly Hills, 90210 star by posting a photo of her teenage Dylan McKay scrapbook. "With the scar in his eyebrow and the expression lines in his forehead, Perry, who was 24 when the show began, didn’t look 15," says Paskin. "But this doubleness was kind of the whole point of Dylan: Spiritually, he was older than a regular teen, more experienced, more knowing, definitely not a virgin. Not to get all tragic hero about a character who wore Baja sweaters, but Dylan’s maturity was his tragedy. His worldliness was a result of his own parents’ neglect, but it kept him from being fully embraced by his would-be surrogate family, the Walshes, whose paterfamilias could never trust his sexual worldliness. Dylan’s sophistication (and, yes, his face) was his appeal. Think of his first date with the sheltered Brenda Walsh (Shannen Doherty), which gets extremely melodramatic when they arrive at Dylan’s hotel suite and he has a fight with his father, a white-collar criminal. Dylan wants a drink. Brenda wants to leave. Downstairs, she tries to speak with him about what happened, but instead, he smashes a flowerpot on the street, scaring her. She runs from him, and he gives chase, bear-hugging her from behind, sobbing, apologizing, his nose running, until they kiss. He’s a threatening, awful mess, but he is also irresistible, a dramatic, romantic, vulnerable boy with all the baggage of a screwed-up man. (And that was before he watched his father get blown up by a car bomb or his wife get murdered in his Porsche!) "

ALSO:

• Beverly Hills, 90210 produces initially miscalculated by thinking Jason Priestley's Brandon Walsh was the heartthrob
• Luke Perry could've coasted on Dylan McKay for the rest of his career, but he wanted to prove his immense versatility
• Perry was never a has-been because he never seemed to try to recapture a role that he had outgrown
• Dylan McKay was the first ideal of what a sharp, sensitive, literary, sideburned prince might be
• Perry's Community cameo embodies what made him a star
• Here are Perry's most essential 90210 episodes
• Perry's three defining TV roles: Oz, 90210, Riverdale
• Riverdale's Lili Reinhart writes a poem in honor of Perry
• Perry said last year he would've loved to have a 90210 reunion on Riverdale
• Beverly Hills, 90210 mom Carol Potter recalls Perry trying to avoid fame going to his head
• The Simpsons producer Mike Reiss recalls Perry on the 1993 “Krusty Gets Kancelled” episode