Fair warning: This post contains plot details for the upcoming Community season finale.
Although it hasn’t been garnering the same buzz as previous seasons, Community has been quietly releasing new, surprisingly solid episodes on Yahoo! since March. With the sixth season finale set to premiere on Tuesday, news has leaked of a guest appearance from former cast member Yvette Nicole Brown, a.k.a. Shirley “That’s Nice!” Bennett.
The finale reportedly centers on Abed asking everyone to pitch TV show ideas for a seventh season, and Brown’s return will somehow be a part of that. But since all this news comes from a Reddit thread, it’s probably also worth taking with a grain of salt.
Brown left the series to take care of her ailing father and has spent the past year playing a supporting role on The Odd Couple, a multi-camera series that has a much easier production schedule. Her character Shirley similarly left Greendale to care for her father, so it will be much easier to justify her brief visit than it would be if Chevy Chase’s Pierce Hawthorne returned from the dead or Donald Glover’s Troy Barnes gave up his dream of sailing the world on LeVar Burton’s boat.
Community hasn’t yet been renewed for a seventh season, so this could very well be the final farewell for the series. If that’s the case, it’ll be nice to have another familiar face around. On the other hand, given its truly bizarre production history, Community could also very well reemerge next year as a YouTube vlog series starring Joel McHale and Ken Jeong as the only two survivors of a Greendale apocalypse.