This ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ Character Is Returning For The Final Season (Kind Of)

While I love just about everything (and everyone) in the CW’s musical comedy Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, I always had a special place in my heart for Greg Serrano, Rebecca Bunch’s on-again-off-again love interest from season one. I was crushed when he left early on in the second season, but we have good news: he’s coming back for the final season of the show! Well, kind of.

It turns out actor Santino Fontana was serious when he signed off for only one season of the show (he only agreed to a one-year contract because it was “best for his family life”), which means we won’t be seeing the good ol’ Greg we’ve all come to know and love, but we will see a version of him. According to Entertainment Weekly, Pitch Perfect‘s Skylar Astin will be stepping in to play a reimagined version of the West Covina native.

Sounds weird? It’s definitely an interesting choice on the show’s part. The last time we saw Greg, he was attending Alcoholics Anonymous, moving across the country for college, and singing his heart out at the airport as he said goodbye to Rebecca. It seemed pretty final, but my fangirl heart still hoped that we might see him again someday. I just never imagined it would be as a different actor completely.

But apparently there’s a point to the whole actor switch-up. Astin’s version of Greg is meant to be “reimagined,” to show, at least in part, how people change over time — and how our perceptions of them do, too.

“It’s not only a big leap and feels experimental and playful like our show, but as we’ll see when the show airs, it’s a great statement on how our perception of people changes, and Greg is sort of a barometer for how Rebecca changes,” actress Rachel Bloom explained.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BkiTOukDhXl/?hl=en&taken-by=skylarastin

Well, one thing’s for sure: Rebecca has definitely changed. Since Greg left, she got back together with her ex, got engaged, got left at the altar, plotted revenge against her ex, survived a suicide attempt, got diagnosed with BPD, fell in love with her arch nemesis, and went on trial for attempted murder. Let’s just say he’s missed a lot, and she’s probably missed a lot of his own character growth in the process.

And don’t worry: unlike other shows who recast characters, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend doesn’t plan to overlook Greg’s seemingly sudden changes.

“We’re going to call it out,” Bloom said. “It’s not a Becky on Roseanne situation where suddenly it’s a different person.”

Well, I love Greg, and I love Skylar Astin. Still, I’m not one-hundred percent sold on this concept yet. I’ll let the episodes speak for themselves.