Peyton Sawyer, was introduced in the first season as Brooke Davis's best friend, and also as Nathan Scott's on-and-off girlfriend. She has a huge love for music and for art, and frequently sketches certain events in her life, or feelings she cannot bring herself to tell anybody about.

Peyton develops feelings for Lucas Scott in the first season, but frequently tries keeping them to herself since he was consistently off-and-on with Brooke for the first four seasons. Her adoptive mother died in a car accident when she was young, and her adoptive father works out on the sea, which leaves Peyton on her own for most of the first four seasons.

She met her birth mother Ellie Harp near the end of the second season, however she also dies from cancer by the middle of the third season. Peyton was consistently surrounded by terrible events: she was shot in the leg during the school shooting and she lost a lot of blood in season three, but rescued by Lucas, and was brutally attacked twice by Ian Banks, who pretended to be her long-lost brother Derek. She was saved the first time by Lucas and her real brother, and she was saved the second time by Brooke.

Peyton left for Los Angeles to work as an intern at a major record label at the end of season four, but did not enjoy herself or feel she was accomplishing anything, so she returned to Tree Hill in the season five premiere. Peyton eventually married Lucas near the end of season six, and the two had a daughter, Sawyer Brooke Scott. Peyton and Lucas leave Tree Hill to raise Sawyer on the road, alongside Lucas's mother Karen, her daughter Lily, and her husband Andy.