Childhood friends Dawson Leery (James Van Der Beek) and Joey Potter (Katie Holmes) are now facing the challenge of sustaining their close, platonic relationship as their world changes around them. While Dawson focuses on being a filmmaker and Joey deals with her mother's death and her father's imprisonment, Jennifer Lindley (Michelle Williams), who has just moved from New York to help her grandparents, catches Dawson's eye. And though he's an uncomfortable outsider with his classmates, Dawson's pal Pacey Witter (Joshua Jackson) makes an impression on one of his teachers. After confronting a deadly hurricane, an out-of-wedlock birth by Joey's sister, the exposure of Pacey's affair, a visit by Jen's former boyfriend and a serial killer in Capeside, Joey considers attending school in Europe during the coming year as Jen realizes that a romance with Dawson is out of the question – for now.
