Saved By The Bell Season 2 Adds New Character to College Years Series

The second season of Peacock’s Saved By the Bell revival is here with the full season dropping on the streaming platform last week and while the series continued the stories of this next generation of kids at Bayside High, it also continued the stories of the beloved, now adult characters from the original series – as well as revisited moments from the past. One of the aspects of the past that Season 2 revisited was the relationship between A.C. Slater (Mario Lopez) and Jessie Spano (Elizabeth Berkley) and introduced a new character to the short-lived spin-off, Saved By the Bell: The College Years by having Jessie appear in flashback.

In the Season 2 finale, a new “flashback” scene sees Jessie visit Slater at his college dorm. As fans of the Saved by the Bell franchise know, that scene isn’t a true flashback in terms of what actually aired during Saved By the Bell: The College Years‘ one-season run. Berkeley didn’t actually appear in the spinoff, but for series executive producer Franco Bario, bringing Jessie into the story through the scene was a “perfect” way to bring everything together.

“I think it was perfect,” Bario told TVLine. “That was the point of the clip, that she just shows up at The College Years for a random reason. I mean, a lot of those clips [in the Slater/Jessie montage] were sort of, like, ‘Hey, these were things that never really happened, but we’re acting like they did,’ which was fun.”

Season 2 of the revival also revisits The College Years in another, somewhat unexpected way. During the season, viewers see Kelly (Tiffani Thiessen) talk with Jessie about how she thinks fate is trying to keep her from being a doctor only for Jessie to refer to Zack’s (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) whisking her away to get married and prompting her to abandon her semester at sea in college.

“It felt like in this show, where a lot of what we do and what we mine comedy from is looking at the old show and reevaluating it through a 2021 lens, it felt like it was time to give Kelly her due, and let her have some of that ambition that I think people were excited [to see] in The College Years,” executive producer Tracey Wigfield said.

Saved By the Bell Season 2 is now streaming on Peacock.

Were you excited to see Jessie added to Saved By the Bell: The College Years via new “flashback”? Let us know in the comment section!