Griffith, who later landed the lead role in Matlock, eventually returned to Mayberry again in the 1980s for a made-for-TV reunion feature that reunited a large bulk of The Andy Griffith Show’s original cast. Titled Return to Mayberry, the show acted as a crossover, continuation, and series finale for The Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., and Mayberry R.F.D., bringing back Andy, Opie, Barney, Gomer, Helen, and a host of others from the original shows. However, this time around, it’s Sam and his son Mike who are absent from the cast and aren’t mentioned (though, neither is Andy and Helen’s son, who would’ve been nearly 18 at the time). Another strange hole in Return to Mayberry is Aunt Bee, who is said to have died prior to the events of the film. Some have speculated that actress Frances Bavier was sick at the time and unable to return, while others claimed she wasn’t interested. In any case, Favier died only a few years later.
Return to Mayberry ends the Andy Griffith saga with a bit more heart than “Mayberry R.F.D.” or the subsequent series ever could. For starters, Andy returns to his North Carolinian hometown to see Opie become a father and to run for sheriff again, only to learn that Barney is in the race. Not wishing to run against his friend, Andy stays out of it, helping Barney behind the scenes and even helping him find love with his former girlfriend, Thelma Lou (Betty Lynn). Throughout the made-for-TV picture, Andy gets to deliver his own grandson and (unsurprisingly) gets re-elected as sheriff after Barney discovers that Andy was going to run originally. Ending on a much more satisfactory note than the Sam Jones-centered finale, Return to Mayberry was the last we saw of these characters, and somehow, that seemed alright. “Well, they were the best years of my life,” Andy Griffith explained regarding the original series in the 1993 reunion The Andy Griffith Show Reunion: Back to Mayberry, “the absolute best.”
In the premiere episode of Mayberry R.F.D., after dancing around it for years, Andy and Helen finally get married. That’s right. Rather than end The Andy Griffith Show with a wedding, the writers chose to push audiences to the spin-off to see what happened next. Aptly titled “Andy and Helen Get Married,” the premiere brought back all the familiar faces who returned for the Mayberry continuation, as well as Ron Howard’s Opie and even Don Knotts, who returned as Barney to celebrate his friend’s happiness after an extended absence. While Andy and Helen’s marriage is the event the episode centers around, the episode is really more about Aunt Bee after Sam tries to convince her to live with him and Mike on the farm, an offer she decides to take up by the end.
After that, Andy returns to Mayberry a few times post-Andy Griffith and still acts as the town’s sheriff in Season 1. But by Season 2, Andy and Helen have started a family of their own. Living in Charlotte, Andy took a job with the State Bureau of Investigation, and around the same time, Helen gave birth to Andy, Jr. In “Andy’s Baby,” the family (sans Opie) returns to Mayberry to christen their newborn, which causes a stir among the usual suspects, who all fight to be the Godfather. Andy never appeared on Mayberry R.F.D. again, despite being credited for the third season episode “Alice and the Professor.” With Andy gone, Mayberry eventually pushed Goober into the role of sheriff, though the show didn’t run on much longer before its own cancellation.
