‘Saved by The Bell’ Season Two Premiere Honors Late Dustin Diamond

Peacock’s Saved By The Bell revival came back for season two and honored a Bayside High Classmate.

The cast of the 80’s sitcom said goodbye to their friend Screeh, played by Dustin Diamond, who died from carcinoma in February at the age of 44.

Diamond was one of the original classmates and was notably missing from the season premiere. The show explained Screech was away living on the International Space Station with his robot Kevin.

Before his death, Diamond was in talks to appear on the show if a second season was confirmed. But he died in-between seasons.

The premiere gave the original cast members and classmates a chance to honor and mourn Diamond’s passing and Screech’s absence.

“We obviously gave that a lot of thought and care,” Berkley Lauren, who is also a producer of the show, said. [Showrunner Tracey Wigfiled] and the writers showed us, as a team [and] cast, a few different versions for how we could go about doing it. I can’t say enough about how inclusive [Wigfield] is in terms of collaboration, especially with this. because this was someone in our lives, and it was so tragic.”

The tribute scene had characters Jessie Spano (Berkley Lauren), A.C. Slater (Mario Lopez), Zach Morris (Mark-Paul Gosselaar), Kelly Kapowski (Tiffani Thiessen) and Lisa Turtle (Lark Voorhies) together at their old hangout spot to try new menu items. There, the crew tried the newest addition – Screech’s Spaghetti Burger and reminisced about their friend.

They talked about the time he became psychic after getting struck by lighting to him winning Miss Bayside over Lisa.

“It’s a little weird but great,” Slater said of the burger.

“Kinda like Screech,” Lisa replied.

The gang raised their burgers in honor of Screech and the episodes cuts to a touching compilation of the character’s most memorable moments.

“We really wanted to be sensitive to strike a chord between the choice about his actual character passing and honoring the legacy of Dustin himself,” Lauren said. “No one could have done that role but him – so incredibly well and with his comedic genius. And you just figuring out a way to integrate that into the script without it being heavy-handed. It just was [about] striking a balance of honoring, reflecting, celebrating and mourning together.”