As “Bel-Air” gears up for its fourth and final season, showrunner Carla Banks-Waddles teased that the upcoming installment will feel like both an ending and a beginning.
“I think that it will feel like an ending but also a beginning,” Banks-Waddles said on a “Bel-Air” panel during NBCUniversal’s recent backlot day. “I can say that it’s going to be senior year, and Will and Carlton are going into their senior year. It’s been a four-year journey. It feels like it’s time to graduate.”
It won’t be just Will and Carlton who are “graduating to their next step,” Banks-Waddles continued, noting that each characters’ Season 4 storylines will introduce their next act. “It will feel like an ending, but it should also feel like a great beginning for what’s next for everybody.”
Olly Sholotan, who plays Carlton Banks on “Bel-Air,” noted that the final episodes are were handled with “the most care I’ve seen, I think, any characters in television have.” “It was just really beautiful, as a cast, for us to read the words that you wrote and how much care you took of every character’s final moments on the show,” Sholotan said to Banks-Waddles on the panel.
Sholotan and Jabari Banks, who stars as Will, also teased that as Will and Carlton transition from boys to young men as they graduate college, there might be some conflicts between the cousins.
“They are really stepping into their own this season and showing up for each other in ways that they never have before and encouraging each other in ways they never have before, I think it’s natural for our characters to butt heads,” Banks said. “I think they take care of each other in the most beautiful way possible.”
“And maybe Uncle Phil needs to step in here and there to help them out in all of the legal ways needed, maybe,” Sholotan added.
As the cast and crew of “Bel-Air” prepare to say goodbye to the Peacock series, Cassandra Freeman, who plays Vivian Banks, praised the show for offering what she said fans have applauded as an “accurate depiction” of “what it’s like to see my mother, my cousins, these successful women in the world,” saying “I’m excited to see what develops from people being inspired by the show, what legacy comes from this … I pray that the legacy of this show is you see more people have full representation and expression. I’ll miss that for the viewers and for us.”
While “Bel-Air” is coming to an end, it might not be the end of the road for some characters, with NBCUniversal president of scripted content Lisa Katz saying she would be “very open” to exploring a potential “Bel-Air” spinoff series.
“Right now, we are focused on doing this very intentional last season and making sure that it is very satisfying for the audience; but, obviously, looking at all of these characters, they are all so dimensional,” Katz said. “We realize there’s so many different places we could go, so we’d be very open to exploring that … [and] looking into that as we wrap that up.”
