‘Black-Ish’ Spinoff Starring Yara Shahidi Will Not Get Picked Up By ABC?

“Black-ish” Season 3, episode 23 was recently released by ABC, and it served as the backdoor pilot episode for Yara Shahidi’s upcoming spinoff.

The episode, titled “Liberal Arts,” opened with Zoey Johnson’s dad, Dre (Anthony Anderson), dropping her off to attend a two-day orientation. Dre went on a spiel about his eldest daughter heading off to college, and Zoey interrupted him mid-sentence saying that she can tell her own story. From there, the point of view of the sitcom shifted from Dre to Zoey.

Read: “Black-ish” spinoff casts Chris Parnell as Dean

While in school, Zoey veered away from joining organizations or following everyone else’s footsteps. That is, until she met a good-looking guy named Aaron (Trevor Jackson). The latter asked Zoey to join the Black Student Union. The episode also introduced “Suburgatory” alum Chris Parnell, who will be playing the role of a dean in Zoey’s prospective university.

As of late, the “Black-ish” spinoff hasn’t received an official release date from ABC, but creator Kenya Barris is confident that Zoey will have exciting stories to tell. While speaking with TV Guide, Barris said that she wants the spinoff to have a huge impact on today’s young generation. The publication also asked Barris for her take on the fact that a spinoff would require Shahidi to work extra hard, and she said that the 17-year-old actress is up for it.

TV Guide noted that the “Black-ish” spinoff could have a lot of potential since there will be a shift from showcasing Zoey as a rich and popular spoiled girl to a mature and independent young woman. In the real world, Shahidi has also inspired a lot of young kids.

While speaking to Code Switch’s Shereen Marisol Meraji, Shahidi said that she feels her character, Zoey, is able to capture the melancholic nature of her generation. “We have grown up in the throes of the ‘24 minute news cycle.’ Feeling as though we don’t even choose to intake all of this information, but it happens. I remember seeing the Philando Castile live stream and not knowing what I was looking at. Somebody had tweeted it and I clicked on it. And just being like, ‘Oh, that person is bleeding. Oh wow.’ And I just remember that moment of freaking out and not knowing what to do and not knowing how to process what’s happening. Zoey really did capture how a lot of my peers felt, where it’s like we’re intaking this information at such a fast rate that’s it’s hard to process it,” she said.

On the other hand, TV Line called the backdoor pilot episode as a “surprisingly laugh-challenged” installment. The publication also questioned whether or not the network should consider picking up the spinoff to TV series status.

Meanwhile, “Black-ish” Season 3 will release its 24th and final episode on May 10. As of late, the sitcom has not yet been picked up by the network for Season 4. TV Series Finale revealed that the ratings for “Black-ish” dropped considerably in Season 3. Following the release of episode 23, “Black-ish” only garnered a total of 1.2 million viewers.