SUPERSTORE Bosses Tease an Unexpected Rivalry, A Holiday Twist, and a Cloud 9 Shakeup

As SUPERSTORE’s final season continues to play out, the comedy has a lot of things on its plate—from the consistent leadership changes, the potential revival of a romance, and Mateo’s (Nico Santos) continued limbo as an undocumented person.

With just ten episodes left for the series, showrunners Gabe Miller and Jonathan Green teased what’s ahead…

Shakeup at Cloud 9!

Though Dina (Lauren Ash) always balked at stepping up to be the store’s boss, Glenn’s (Mark McKinney) recent absence has made her reconsider.

“[Glenn will] return in 6×06, but Dina has gotten the taste of being manager,” Miller teases. “So there’s a little bit of a power struggle that does end in a new arrangement for the store that will be [used] for the rest of the season.”

Cheyenne (Nichole Sakura) vs. Mateo?!

“Cheyenne will do her best to step up and we’ll see her grow into the role as floor supervisor and take on a little more responsibility,” Miller previews. “But we’ll also see that Mateo, who had been floor supervisor until his immigration status got in the way, he’ll be still be critical of the way Cheyenne’s doing it. And that will bring them into conflict, and it’ll build to a full on beef between them. So, we get to see these two best friends in almost like a high school-style like war for a few episodes.”

And their fellow employees will, naturally, get pulled into the conflict. “[They’re] getting the other employees on their sides and capturing sort of everybody’s attention,” Green teases. “It’s a lot of fun to see the two of them at each other’s throats, for the first time. The same thing that makes them connect so well is also what makes them great adversaries.”

The return of familiar faces.

Jonah’s (Ben Feldman) ex-girlfriend Kelly (Kelly Stables) will be back…but the EPs are mum about the circumstances around her arrival. (Kelly left the store in the aftermath of Jonah and Amy’s very public coupling, but the duo became friends—and union allies—in recent years.)

“She is still working at the Fenton store,” Green says. “The things we’ve loved about Kelly, we will continue to love about Kelly.“

Adds Miller, “It’s a funny and surprising turn.”

Also returning in the show’s final season? Cheyenne’s husband, Bo (Johnny Pemberton), and Mateo’s boyfriend, Eric (George Salazar).

Mateo may take a step forward with his immigration case.

SUPERSTORE’s fourth season concluded with Mateo, who is undocumented, being caught by ICE. And while early season 5 dug into that, since he was able to return to the store—albeit in different roles, because he couldn’t return to his previous job—the story hasn’t been on the forefront.

“It isn’t just that other things have crowded that story out—it was actually a deliberate decision,” Green says. “We wanted to spend some time exploring what Mateo’s life is like as someone who is now in this long, complicated, dragged out deportation process that can just go on for a while—what it’s like living day to day under those circumstances, without big news every day about what’s happening to him. Unfortunately, the way it can often play out is you often are just waiting on hold for a while. He’s now waiting for his hearing to see if he’ll be removed.”

But the storyline will be back later in the season. “He will finally have the opportunity to get his ankle monitor removed, which obviously is a big event,” Green previews. “But there is something that comes up in the store that threatens to jeopardize that…”

As Mateo is going through this period of uncertainty, it has unexpectedly mirrored the real-life circumstances many have felt during the current pandemic.

“We’re sort of making a point of the way that everybody can feel like their lives have just been put on hold by the pandemic—we’re drawing the parallels to Mateo’s life,” Green says. “And there’s a little bit of a feeling of, like, you know, welcome to my world! Everyone is now forced to deal with what he’s been dealing with, and we may see him make some decisions to not just act like his life is on hold and try to move things forward, despite the uncertainty in his life.”

Love—and drama—is in the air.

After being off-on—frequently sans acknowledged feelings—for much of the run of the series, “the Dina-Garrett relationship is something we’re going to continue to explore toward the end of the season,” Green previews. “Just sort of their complicated feelings for each other that we’ve seen glimpses of over the seasons, and even this season, a little bit. Things get a little bit confusing for them and they find themselves in some complicated entanglements because of it.”

And in a different kind of love, Sandra’s (Kaliko Kauahi) unexpected adoption of Tony (Benjamin Norris) will impact the store when he comes to work at Cloud 9.

“We’re continuing to explore Sandra’s mothering side,” Miller says. “We get to see just to see a little [how] Sandra’s overprotective mom.”

Which means Sandra’s forever nemesis Carol (Irene White) may have some new tricks up her sleeve.
“Carol has some other stuff going on, too,” Green teases. “We can say that she continues to cause problems for the store in these upcoming episodes.”

’Tis the season?

With COVID impacting the air schedule of season 6, the show has not been able to do its traditional holiday-centric episodes.

But with this being the last go-round for the show, the writers have found a way to get one final fix in.

“We actually have a really fun episode coming up—it’ll be 6×11—where we have found a way to do a holiday episode, even though it’s not at a holiday time of year,” Green says. “We found a way to combine multiple holidays into one episode, because we were really feeling that, too. We were disappointed we didn’t get to do a Halloween episode this year.”

Adds Miller: “And it ties into the COVID theme of the season.”

How will the potential spinoff play into the final stretch of episodes?

Shortly after the news of SUPERSTORE’s final season broke, the network announced it was in the early stages of developing a spinoff centered around Cheyenne and Bo.

In the past, shows have handled potential spinoffs in two ways: either a planted backdoor pilot (think THE OFFICE’s “The Farm” episode) or end the show and let the spinoff handle the explanation of how they got there (think FRIENDS and JOEY). For SUPERSTORE, they’ll be doing the latter.

“Because [BO & CHEYENNE is] still in early stages, we’re treating the show like its own entity,” Green says.

SUPERSTORE, Thursdays, 8:30/7:30c, NBC

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• SUPERSTORE Team Reveals Alternate Jonah-Amy Storylines
• SUPERSTORE’s Ben Feldman on Reaching the ‘Really Special’ Episode 100 Milestone
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