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 claim 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 concerning the original series in the 1993 reunion The Andy Griffith Show Reunion: Back to Mayberry, “the absolute best.”
