One Tree Hill starter questions
Warm-up round. If you watched the first season once, you should clear most of these without stopping.
Twelve questions on the town, the team and the Scott family tree — the details the show repeats in almost every episode.
Q1.In which US state is the town of Tree Hill?Tap to reveal
Answer: North Carolina
Tree Hill is invented, but the show was shot in Wilmington, North Carolina, and the real coastline, bridges and river you see on screen are all local.
Q2.What is the name of the Tree Hill High basketball team?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Ravens
Basketball is the engine of the first four seasons, and Lucas later borrows the bird for the title of his first novel.
Q3.How are Lucas and Nathan Scott related?Tap to reveal
Answer: They are half-brothers
They share a father, Dan Scott. Dan married Nathan's mother Deb; Lucas was raised alone by Karen. Neither brother can stand the other when the show starts.
Q4.What kind of business does Lucas's mother Karen run?Tap to reveal
Answer: A cafe — Karen's Cafe
It doubles as the show's living room. Haley waits tables there, Deb later buys in as co-owner, and half the series' big conversations happen in those booths.
Q5.What is Nathan's jersey number?Tap to reveal
Answer: 23
Haley has the number tattooed on her lower back in season two, which is roughly how seriously this show takes basketball.
Q6.What number did Lucas wear when he first joined the Ravens?Tap to reveal
Answer: 3
He wore 3 for three seasons, then switched to 22 — Keith’s old Ravens number — in season four, and Skills took over the 3.
Q7.Where do Lucas and his friends play pickup basketball?Tap to reveal
Answer: The River Court
The outdoor court by the river is where Lucas is a good player before he is an official one, and where he beats Nathan one-on-one in season one.
Q8.Who is Nathan's mother?Tap to reveal
Answer: Deb Scott
Deb is married to Dan when the show opens and spends most of her screen time trying to get out from under him.
Q9.Which classmate is Peyton Sawyer dating in the pilot?Tap to reveal
Answer: Nathan Scott
The relationship is already curdling when Lucas arrives, and Peyton spends the first season pulling away from it.
Q10.Who has been Lucas's best friend since childhood?Tap to reveal
Answer: Haley James
They grew up together — Lucas’s other crowd, Skills, Mouth, Junk and Fergie, lived at the River Court, but Haley is the one inside the house. Which is exactly why Nathan targets her.
Q11.Which network premiered One Tree Hill in 2003?Tap to reveal
Answer: The WB
The WB aired the first three seasons. After The WB and UPN merged into The CW in 2006, the show ran there until it ended in 2012.
Q12.What is coach Whitey Durham's real first name?Tap to reveal
Answer: Brian
Barry Corbin played Brian Dale Durham, who coaches the Ravens through the high-school seasons. He wore #1 for the same team in the fifties, and by the series finale that jersey hangs retired in the Tree Hill gym alongside Nathan’s 23.
Season one: half-brothers, the Ravens and Tutor Girl
Season one is the season everyone remembers, and it is where most One Tree Hill quiz questions live. Lucas joins the team his brother owns, Nathan hires a tutor for the wrong reasons, and Dan Scott ruins everything he touches.
These fifteen run roughly in broadcast order, from Lucas's first practice to the wedding in the finale.
Q1.Who talked Whitey into giving Lucas a spot on the Ravens?Tap to reveal
Answer: Keith Scott
With half the squad suspended over a theft on the team bus, Keith went to Whitey’s office and pitched his nephew. Whitey was reluctant, came down to the River Court anyway, and offered Lucas a spot — which Lucas turned down the first time.
Q2.Which Raven is the first to treat Lucas like an actual teammate?Tap to reveal
Answer: Jake Jagielski
The rest of the squad follows Nathan's lead and freezes Lucas out. Lucas might well have quit without Jake.
Q3.What is the name of Jake's baby daughter?Tap to reveal
Answer: Jenny
Jake is raising her by himself after her mother, Nikki, walked out, and the custody fight over Jenny runs for two seasons.
Q4.Why does Whitey keep letting Jake off the hook for missing practice?Tap to reveal
Answer: Because Jake is raising a baby on his own
Whitey is gruff with everyone and quietly forgiving with the players who need it, which is the whole shape of the character.
Q5.Why does Nathan first ask Haley to tutor him?Tap to reveal
Answer: To get at Lucas through his best friend
The plan works for about two episodes, and then Nathan genuinely falls for her and changes sides for good.
Q6.What does Nathan give Haley at their first tutoring session?Tap to reveal
Answer: A bracelet out of a Cracker Jack box
“Don’t say I never gave you anything” — a throwaway line the show keeps calling back to, and the bracelet itself keeps resurfacing at the big Naley moments for the rest of the series.
Q7.What nickname does Brooke invent for Haley?Tap to reveal
Answer: Tutor Girl
Written Tutorgirl or Tutor-Girl just as often. It starts as a put-down about the dorky girl with the study books and ends up as a term of affection.
Q8.Who does Lucas cheat on Brooke with in season one?Tap to reveal
Answer: Peyton
Peyton is Brooke's best friend, which makes it the most expensive mistake on the show — the damage to the two girls' friendship outlasts the romance.
Q9.Which adult acts as the father figure in Lucas's life?Tap to reveal
Answer: Keith Scott, his uncle
Keith is Dan's older brother, runs the body shop, and is in love with Karen. Whitey coaches Lucas; Keith raises him.
Q10.True or false: Lucas has a serious heart condition.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
He is diagnosed with HCM — hypertrophic cardiomyopathy — the same inherited condition Dan has, and his refusal to manage it drives several later storylines.
Q11.Do Dan and Deb divorce during season one?Tap to reveal
Answer: No
Deb wants out and Dan will not let go. Nathan gets so worn down by the two of them that he files for emancipation instead.
Q12.Where were Lucas and Keith driving when their car was hit in season one?Tap to reveal
Answer: To the airport
They were on their way to collect Karen, who was coming home from a cooking course in Italy — and Keith had been drinking before he drove. The crash is episode thirteen, “Hanging By a Moment”; Lucas spends days in a coma, and the shoulder he wakes up with is still costing the Ravens shots nine episodes later.
Q13.Who got Lucas out of the wreck and to the hospital?Tap to reveal
Answer: Dan Scott
Dan saw the crash happen, and to get Lucas treated he had to say out loud, on the record, that Lucas was his son. The first real crack in his villainy, and the show spends the next eight seasons refusing to decide whether it counts for anything.
Q14.Do the Ravens win the championship at the end of season one?Tap to reveal
Answer: No
Dan is filling in as coach, pushes an injured Lucas onto the floor, and the team loses. The Ravens' title run comes in a later season.
Q15.Which couple gets married at the end of season one?Tap to reveal
Answer: Nathan and Haley
They elope in secret: Nathan is emancipated from Dan and Deb, and Haley gets her parents’ permission. They never divorce — the big church ceremony in season three is a vow renewal.
Weddings, secrets and the Scott family
Once high school settles down, One Tree Hill turns into a small-town thriller with a cheerleading squad. Somebody is always arriving with a claim on one of the Scotts.
Spoilers ahead — these seven cover the middle seasons, including the death the whole series pivots on.
Q1.Who is Taylor?Tap to reveal
Answer: Haley's older sister
Taylor drifts in and out of Tree Hill with no warning, and Nathan turns out to have a history with her — which lands about as well as you would expect.
Q2.True or false: Dan kills Keith.Tap to reveal
Answer: True
Dan shoots his own brother inside the school during the shooting episode, “With Tired Eyes, Tired Minds, Tired Souls, We Slept”, and lets the dead Jimmy Edwards carry the blame until his own guilt makes him turn himself in at the end of season four.
Q3.Which new student goes after a married Nathan?Tap to reveal
Answer: Rachel Gatina
Rachel, played by Danneel Harris (now Danneel Ackles), transfers in at the start of senior year and treats the Scott family as a target list. She drops Nathan the moment he tells her Haley is pregnant.
Q4.What does Nathan do at his own vow renewal in season three, when a limo goes off the bridge?Tap to reveal
Answer: Dives in after Rachel and his uncle Cooper
The limo had been taken by a drunk Rachel, so she and Cooper ended up in it while the newlyweds drove themselves off to their London honeymoon. Cooper Lee is Deb’s brother, so Nathan is swimming down after family — and season three ends with all three of them still under the water off the Molina Bridge. He gets them out in the season four premiere.
Q5.Who is Derek?Tap to reveal
Answer: Peyton's half-brother
She finds him as an adult — he is a Marine — after a stalker has already spent half a season impersonating him. The real Derek ends up teaching her self-defence.
Q6.What is the name of Nathan and Haley's son?Tap to reveal
Answer: Jamie — James Lucas Scott
He is the baby Haley is pregnant with in high school, and from season five onward he is played by Jackson Brundage.
Q7.Besides Nathan and Lucas, which Raven does Peyton date?Tap to reveal
Answer: Jake Jagielski
Jake leaves Tree Hill with Jenny to keep her safe, and Peyton later goes looking for them both.
After the four-year time jump
Season five skips graduation, college and the first years of adulthood entirely: the premiere opens four years, six months and two days after the season four finale and lets you work out what changed.
It is the cleanest dividing line in the series, and the questions people miss most often sit right here.
Q1.How much time passes between the season four finale and the season five premiere?Tap to reveal
Answer: Four years, six months and two days
The premiere is named for the exact gap, which is also the show telling you it is done with high school.
Q2.How is Nathan hurt badly enough to start season five in a wheelchair?Tap to reveal
Answer: He is thrown through a plate-glass window during a fight in a bar
It happens inside the time jump. Rival fans bait him with a fake autograph request and he almost walks away — until one of them insults Haley. He goes through the glass screaming that he cannot feel his legs, and the Seattle Sonics draft slot goes with it.
Q3.What is the title of Lucas's first novel?Tap to reveal
Answer: An Unkindness of Ravens
He starts writing it in high school. "An unkindness" really is a collective noun for ravens, which makes it a double meaning about the team.
Q4.Who is Lucas dating when the show returns in season five?Tap to reveal
Answer: Lindsey Strauss
She is the editor of his book, and the season takes their engagement a long way before deciding what to do with it.
Q5.What is Haley doing for a living after the jump?Tap to reveal
Answer: Teaching — she's an English teacher at Tree Hill High
Tutor Girl grows up into faculty, back in the same building where she tutored Nathan.
Q6.Who coaches the Ravens in season five, and who assists?Tap to reveal
Answer: Lucas, with Skills as his assistant
Whitey has retired from Tree Hill and taken a college job — Lucas spent the missing years as his assistant there — so the varsity bench goes to a novelist barely out of college and his oldest River Court friend.
Q7.What is Brooke's fashion label called?Tap to reveal
Answer: Clothes Over Bros
It starts as a high-school joke about her priorities and becomes a real company, and most of Brooke's adult storylines run through it.
Q8.What career is Mouth chasing after the time jump?Tap to reveal
Answer: Sports broadcasting
Marvin "Mouth" McFadden had been calling Ravens games from the bleachers since season one, so the ambition was never in doubt — only the paycheque.
Q9.Who comes home to Tree Hill in season five hoping to sort things out with Lucas?Tap to reveal
Answer: Peyton Sawyer
She returns after years away, which is what turns Lucas's engagement into a three-way problem.
Cast, music and behind the scenes
One Tree Hill ran long enough that the cast's own lives became part of the trivia, and the show's music booking was good enough that it launched real touring careers.
Eight questions on the people behind the characters.
Q1.Which actors played Lucas Scott and Peyton Sawyer?Tap to reveal
Answer: Chad Michael Murray and Hilarie Burton
Both left after season six, which is why the last three seasons rebuild the show around Nathan, Haley, Brooke and Mouth.
Q2.Who played Nathan Scott?Tap to reveal
Answer: James Lafferty
He appears in all nine seasons and went on to direct episodes of the show himself.
Q3.Which actress played cheerleading captain Brooke Davis?Tap to reveal
Answer: Sophia Bush
Brooke begins as comic relief in the pilot and ends up carrying as much of the series as either Scott brother.
Q4.Who played Keith Scott?Tap to reveal
Answer: Craig Sheffer
Keith is the mechanic, Dan's older brother, and the closest thing the show has to a moral centre while he lasts.
Q5.Which actress played Haley's older sister Taylor?Tap to reveal
Answer: Lindsey McKeon
Taylor turns up rarely and causes maximum damage each time, including a stretch living with Haley and Nathan.
Q6.Which two co-stars married in 2005?Tap to reveal
Answer: Chad Michael Murray and Sophia Bush
They married in April 2005 and separated within months. Both kept working on the show for years afterwards, which is its own kind of professionalism.
Q7.Which song do Bethany Joy Lenz and Tyler Hilton perform on the show?Tap to reveal
Answer: "When the Stars Go Blue"
Haley and Chris Keller cover the Ryan Adams song on tour in season two. Hilton was a working musician before he was cast.
Q8.Which 2005 horror remake starred Chad Michael Murray?Tap to reveal
Answer: House of Wax
He shot it between One Tree Hill seasons, alongside Elisha Cuthbert, Paris Hilton and Jared Padalecki.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many seasons of One Tree Hill are there?
Nine seasons and 187 episodes, from September 2003 to April 2012. The first four are set in high school; season five jumps forward more than four years.
Where was One Tree Hill filmed?
Wilmington, North Carolina, for all nine seasons. Tree Hill itself is fictional, but it is written and shot as a North Carolina town.
Do you need to have watched all nine seasons to play?
No. Most of this quiz sits in seasons one to four, the part almost everyone saw. The time-jump section is where casual viewers start losing points.
What's a good One Tree Hill tiebreaker question?
Closest-guess numbers work best: total episodes (187), Nathan's jersey number (23), or the length of the time jump — four years, six months and two days.
Why do Lucas and Peyton disappear from the later seasons?
Chad Michael Murray and Hilarie Burton both left after season six. Seasons seven to nine follow Nathan, Haley, Brooke, Mouth and the newer cast.
Which One Tree Hill questions get missed most often?
The specifics rather than the romances: Whitey's first name, Lucas's jersey number, the title of his novel, and what Nathan does at his own vow renewal.
