The HBO comedy's final season debuted on Sunday, March 22, nearly a decade after Morris died at age 77 in May 2017
Credit: Colleen Hayes/HBO
NEED TO KNOW
- The Comeback‘s third and final season premiered on Sunday, March 22
- The comedy’s premiere episode addressed the absence of character Mickey Deane, nine years after the death of actor Robert Michael Morris in May 2017
- Lisa Kudrow previously called the character “irreplaceable”
The Comeback is continuing on for one last go, this time without Mickey Deane.
On Sunday, March 22, the hit HBO comedy premiered its third and final season with Lisa Kudrow returning as Valerie Cherish, alongside a few other familiar faces from the show's first two seasons (released in 2005 and 2014, respectively).
Robert Michael Morris, the series star who played Val's beloved hairdresser Mickey in the first two seasons, is absent from the current season following his May 2017 death at age 77.
Despite his absence, the mockumentary series, created by Kudrow and Michael Patrick King, made sure to acknowledge his impact on the show.
In the third-season premiere of The Comeback, Mickey is represented via a photo in Val's dressing room; Val herself explains what happened to her pal in the show's universe. She runs into Tommy Tomlin (Jack O’Brien), before revealing that her friend died following a battle with COVID-19.
“We lost Mickey. He passed away,” Val says. “Covid, the first round: Covid OG, I call it.”
Morris' official cause of death was not confirmed. However, Kudrow and King confirmed that he'd been diagnosed with stage IV melanoma and was undergoing treatment while filming the second season.
Credit: Tommaso Boddi/WireImage
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Speaking with Deadline at SXSW in March 2026, Kudrow called the character played by her late costar "irreplaceable."
"Lisa didn't even consider doing The Comeback once Michael died," King, 71, added. "Lisa wouldn't even think about it. We were done, because he couldn't be replaced. So we came up with the idea that maybe Valarie hasn't really felt it yet."
Kudrow also confirmed that their approach "felt very Valarie, too, because it's something that's difficult, so it's not happening."
O’Brien, whose character is now Val's hairdresser, added that he "wasn't being asked to mimic" the late actor.
"Pretty much, very early on, Tommy says: 'I'm not Mickey,' " King added of O’Brien's character. "So everybody can relax. We're not trying to replace him. We're doing someone else."
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter in an interview published on March 18, Kudrow emphasized why the latest iteration of The Comeback is being billed as the show's "third and final" season.
“I don’t know if I’ll want to do it again in 10 years, so let’s be done, that way no one is asking what’s next or whether we will even want to do more," Kudrow explained. "The most respectful thing we can do for the audience and for the character is make it a three-part story. It’s a trilogy, and this is the end.”
The Comeback first followed Kudrow as a "B-list actress" who agrees to "do a reality show that follows her efforts to land a part in a sitcom in this comedy series," per its first-season synopsis. The latest season finds Val navigating show business (and AI) years down the line.
“It’s fun to be Valerie,” Kudrow told THR. “As many times as people would say to me, ‘It must be so hard to play those situations where everyone is so tough on her. Isn’t that grueling?’ I would just stare back, like, blink, blink, blink. Grueling? Not at all. What’s wrong with me? It wasn’t grueling at all. I didn’t feel bad for one second."
She added, "Valerie creates her own reality. Yeah, she’s a little delusional, but that’s one of the sources of comedy. It’s so obvious to us that people want her to stop talking or that they don’t want her there, but she can’t help it.”
The next episode of The Comeback arrives Sunday, March 29 at 10:30 p.m. ET on HBO and HBO Max, with new episodes arriving weekly through May 10.
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