Marcus Baker, one of the central characters in Netflix’s Ginny and Georgia, struggles with depression rooted in the death of his best friend. This loss becomes the emotional foundation for nearly everything that goes wrong in his life across the series, from pulling away from people he loves to losing interest in activities that once made him happy.
The Loss That Started It All
The show reveals that Marcus’s best friend died before the events of the series. While the details are parceled out gradually, this grief is the clearest trigger for his depression. Losing someone close during adolescence carries serious psychological weight. Research published in European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry found that about 22% of bereaved adolescents developed new clinical-level mental health problems after a major loss, compared to just 5.5% of teens who hadn’t experienced one. That’s a fourfold increase in risk. Marcus falls squarely into that pattern: a teenager whose unprocessed grief evolves into something deeper and more persistent.
What makes his situation realistic is that it doesn’t happen overnight. The grief sits underneath the surface for a long time before it becomes unmanageable, which is exactly how depression following a loss tends to work in real life.
How His Depression Shows Up
Marcus doesn’t talk about feeling depressed in dramatic monologues. Instead, the show lets his behavior tell the story, and those behaviors align closely with how Major Depressive Disorder actually presents. He starts skipping school to stay in bed. He pulls away from Ginny, his family, and his friends. Activities he used to enjoy, like riding his bike or hanging out, stop happening entirely. When he does show up socially, he looks visibly uncomfortable.
His family and friends notice. Multiple characters throughout the series comment on how sad or withdrawn he seems, particularly when he’s outside his room. That detail matters because it reflects a real clinical marker: when the people around someone start independently noticing a sustained change in mood and engagement, it usually signals more than a rough patch. A University of Houston analysis of Marcus’s character noted that he meets the criteria for Major Depressive Disorder, which requires either a persistently depressed mood or a loss of interest in daily life lasting at least two weeks. Marcus displays both.
Drinking and Self-Medication
As Marcus’s depression worsens, particularly in Seasons 2 and 3, he begins drinking heavily. This isn’t a separate problem from his depression. It’s a direct consequence of it. He stops taking his prescribed medication and replaces it with alcohol, which is one of the most common and damaging patterns in adolescent depression. Even after his parents, Ellen and Clint, restart his medication, Marcus continues drinking alongside it.
The show captures something important here: medication alone doesn’t fix everything, especially when someone is actively working against their own recovery. Marcus’s drinking dulls the emotional pain temporarily but accelerates his withdrawal from the people and routines that could actually help him stabilize.
His Relationship With Ginny
Depression doesn’t just affect the person who has it. It reshapes every relationship around them. Marcus and Ginny’s breakup is driven largely by his belief that he doesn’t deserve her, a thought pattern deeply characteristic of depression. The disorder distorts self-worth, making people feel like they’re a burden or fundamentally unlovable.
Ginny is initially devastated by the breakup but begins to understand more when she learns about his depression. This arc reflects a real dynamic that plays out in relationships affected by mental illness: the person with depression pushes people away not out of cruelty but out of a genuine (if distorted) conviction that everyone would be better off without them. Marcus later opens up to others about his depression, including a candid conversation with Georgia where he talks about it directly while fixing her window. These small moments of honesty mark turning points in his willingness to stop hiding what he’s going through.
Why the Portrayal Resonates
Marcus’s depression isn’t presented as a single dramatic episode. It’s slow, messy, and nonlinear. He has stretches where he seems okay and then slides back. He takes his medication, then stops. He connects with someone, then isolates. That inconsistency is one of the most realistic aspects of the portrayal, because real depression rarely follows a clean narrative arc. Recovery involves setbacks, and the show doesn’t shy away from that.
The character also highlights how depression in teenage boys often gets missed or minimized. Marcus isn’t crying in every scene or making overt cries for help. He’s quiet. He’s in his room. He seems “off” but not in a way that immediately sets off alarms, at least not until things have already gotten serious. For viewers who have experienced something similar, or watched someone they care about go through it, that pattern is painfully familiar.