‘Abbott Elementary’ Confirmed To Return For Season 4

It’s been confirmed by ABC that Abbott Elementary will return for a fourth season.

During the Television Critics Association’s winter 2024 press tour, William Stanford Davis — who stars as Mr. Johnson on the hit sitcom — made the announcement.

The third season of the Emmy-winning series premiered on Feb. 7 and reached an average of 2.8 million viewers according to Nielsen.

After the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes of 2023, the new season of Abbott commenced with a five-month time jump and a plot twist for creator Quinta Brunson’s character, Janine.

““t was always in my head that Janine would one day go work for the district. I thought it could be a fun shake-up […] Her hair is different. She’s dressing different,” the two-time Emmy winner told Variety. “We see immediately what kind of growth has happened for her in the past five months.”

While trying to figure out how to explain the prolonged absence without making the storyline feel “too meta,” the writers chose “the most Philly” route — a robbery.

“They thought it’d be cute to walk around West Philly at night with all this camera equipment,” Ava (Janelle James) explains in the season three two-part premiere. “Hell, I’d have helped rob you if I was there. Anyway, here we are, five months later, because that’s how long it takes for three people with art degrees to save up for new cameras.”

As far as the Janine-Gregory (Tyler James Williams) romantic storyline is concerned, Brunson shared, “We’re putting a lot of faith in the audience. We’re not seeing Janine and Gregory talk to each other a ton in this premiere, but we trust the relationship that the audience knows they have. […] In my dating life, there’d be people I’d date, then not talk to for five months; then all of a sudden you spin the block with this person. I really try to make Janine and Gregory a realistic portrayal of dating in your 20s.”

Season two of Abbott earned the strongest season average for an ABC comedy since the 2019-2020 season and ranked as the network’s No. 1 multiplatform series.

Alongside Brunson, Davis, and Williams, the lead cast includes Janelle James as Ava Coleman, Lisa Ann Walter as Melissa Schemmenti, Chris Perfetti as Jacob Hill, and Emmy winner Sheryl Lee Ralph as Barbara Howard.

The show now airs on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET and streams the following day on Hulu.

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