When requested about Donald Glover leaving the present throughout the earliest a part of season 5, Dan Harmon advised Uproxx that he is unsure he would have come again himself if he had identified that he was going to have to determine the best way to regulate the collection with Glover’s absence. (Harmon was fired on the finish of season 3, which led to the shortened, messy fourth season, aka “the gas-leak year.”) There was no unhealthy blood between Harmon and Glover and the collection’ creator apparently “begged” Glover to rethink and stick it out, however Glover merely had different plans. He’s at present midway to an EGOT, however he is allegedly going to come back again for the “Community” film that may occur … ultimately.
Removing Troy from the research group switches up the chemistry fairly a bit, and it would not be simple to seek out one thing as compelling. Curmudgeonly previous white man Pierce was considerably changed by curmudgeonly previous white man (and criminology professor) Buzz Hickey (Jonathan Banks), however there simply was no changing Troy. When requested by Uproxx if it was only a matter of “attack[ing] the problem with numbers,” Harmon mentioned that it was a bit of extra sophisticated than that. Instead of making an attempt to fill the void left by Troy with quite a few characters, the concept was extra to see what clicked naturally:
” … we just thought, ‘Let’s not make people feel like they need to compare anyone to Donald. Let’s just give them more treats and more ways to love ‘Community.’ And maybe one of those will sprout.'”
In addition to Hickey, season 5 noticed characters Ben Chang (Ken Jeong), Dean Pelton (Jim Rash), and Professor Ian Duncan (John Oliver) all get a lot bigger roles, and it led to some nice character interactions that hadn’t been doable earlier than.