Tara McCauley November 5th, 2020 - 8:13 PM
On Thursday November 5, NBC’s retail comedy Superstore celebrated 100 episodes while bidding farewell to principle cast member America Ferrera (Ugly Betty, The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants). To honor the bittersweet occasion, Ferrera’s castmates paid homage to the Superstore actress and multi-episode director on social media as the show aired its milestone episode.
Ferrera first announced her departure from the series in spring of 2020, just as the show was renewed for a sixth season. “We didn’t want to announce her departure until we had a Season 6 pickup,” showrunner Jonathan Green (The Office, The Mindy Project) remarked about Ferrera’s departure in an interview with The New York Post “it was very important to America that the show keep going without her — she didn’t want to be the reason it ended.” However, Ferrera’s plans to leave Cloud 9 were slightly disrupted by the onset of COVID-19.
The final two episodes of season five were to focus on the departure of Ferrera’s character, Amy Sosa, the manager of St. Luis-area big box store Cloud 9. However, when COVID-19 halted production on the show’s finale, Amy’s exit was made incomplete. Fortunately, for showrunner’s Green and Gabe Miller (The Office, The Mindy Project), Ferrera agreed to return for the first two episodes of season six in order to give Amy a proper send-off. “It would [also] allow her to be part of the 100th episode,” Green told Entertainment Weekly about Ferrera returning for first two episodes of season six “which is a real milestone for the show.” Ferrera’s departure coinciding with the 100th episode led to an outpouring of social media love for both the actress and the show on Thursday.
Preparing for the episode, Garret McNeil actor Colton Dunn (Parks & Recreation, Superstore) led fans through a guided behind-the-scenes tour of his pre-show routine in an Instagram video. Meanwhile the Superstore Instagram account asked fans to recount their Superstore origin stories, to which Jonah Simms actor Ben Feldman (Mad Men, Superstore) jokingly responded “NBC had JUST canceled this show I was on…” A to Z was the sitcom Feldman had starred in on the network before moving into his role as Cloud 9’s “new guy” when Superstore premiered in 2015.
Jonah and Amy’s relationship, nicknamed “Simosa” by fans, quickly became a beloved dynamic amongst viewers of the workplace sitcom. “Amy was the grounded center of the show, and she could react to the craziness spinning around her. Jonah always was sort of in that role with her,” Green said of the relationship “and he continues to be in that role as one of our more grounded characters” (Entertainment Weekly).
While Green assured Entertainment Weekly that Jonah would recover from the heartbreak of Amy’s departure, Feldman sent along his own farewell on Instagram by sharing a goofy collage of himself and co-star Ferrera. In addition to Feldman, other members of Superstore’s ensemble joined in with their own social media farewells to Ferrera on Thursday.
Lauren Ash posted a side-by-side photo of her character, Dina Fox, and Amy in the show’s pilot versus the 100th episode on Instagram. “It’s been really interesting watching their relationship grow over the years” showrunner Miller told Entertainment Weekly about Ash and Ferrera’s characters “it’s been cool to, through Amy, find the more surprising side of Dina that you don’t necessarily expect when you see the character.”
According to Entertainment Weekly, Superstore’s 100th episode features a farewell video for Amy Sosa in order to expedite the episode’s sequences of goodbyes. Dunn took a similar approach in his Instagram farewell to Ferrera, compiling a silly video of behind-the-scenes moments of cast and crew. “They’re all really close,” Green said of the cast to The Wrap “the relationships the cast has with each other are very strong.” The tight-knit nature of the cast and crew of Superstore is evidenced in Dunn’s video and the heartfelt nature of the cast’s goodbyes on social media.
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As for Ferrera herself, she posted a picture of the ensemble cast after the pilot and after the 100th episode to illustrate how far the Cloud 9 family has come over the past five years of the sitcom, via Instagram. “While this goodbye is bittersweet, enjoy this episode while we hopefully wait for news of another goodbye,” Ferrera references the awaiting results of the 2020 presidential election, adding “one that I’m actually looking forward to” (Instagram).
While speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Green and Miller demonstrated enthusiasm for the remainder of Superstore’s sixth season and the talent of their ensemble cast. The showrunners teased upcoming story arcs such as Sandra’s motherhood, a complicated rekindling of Dina and Garret’s romance, more deviousness from Carol and Glenn remerging as Cloud 9’s manager during the chaos of COVID-19. Only two episodes into season six and the pandemic has provided much story fodder for the writers of Superstore, something Green and Miller report will continue throughout the season, via Entertainment Weekly.
Though Ferrera has no current plans to return to the NBC sitcom, Green and Miller told The New York Post that Cloud 9’s doors would always remain open to the actress. “That’s the nice thing about having [Amy] leave to go to work for a corporation that’s organically in the world of the show,” Green reported to The New York Post. Green said this storytelling choice was calculated as the writer’s wanted to give Amy both a satisfying ending and room to return to the series in a way that didn’t feel forced.
