When it was announced that a sequel to A Different World, the late-’80s sitcom set at fictional historically Black college Hillman, was in the works, I was all in. I’m a sucker for a reimagining, retelling, rebooting—you name it. I was at the front of the line for Bel-Air, the reimagining of the hugely popular ‘90s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. The jury’s still out on how good Bel-Air was, but I was mostly excited to see a show I loved get a second life and a new audience in a modern setting, complete with callbacks to the original series.
What makes the sequel to A Different World so exciting to me was that it was exactly that—a sequel. The main character is Deborah, the final child—and an oops baby—of Dwayne Wayne and Whitley Gilbert-Wayne. I was excited to watch Deborah pull up to Hillman in 2026, but real talk, I mostly wanted to know what Dwayne and Whitley have been up to.
And Ron.
And Freddie.
And Kim.
And Lena.
You get the point.
I want to know what happened to these characters who have meant so much to me for the past 30 years. The chance for their stories to continue as I’ve gone from a kid to a grown man is the thing that has always driven me nuts about Black TV and film: We rarely get to find out what happened the next day.
This isn’t just a Black entertainment problem, of course, but our movies and shows tend to create such colorful, fully realized characters—and they’re so often rooted in family— that the characters start feeling like family. Cousins, at the very least.
It’s why the Best Man sequels worked. We were invested in their future lives. If you were there in 1999 watching Harper, Jordan, Lance, Murch, Candace, Quentin, Shelby, Robyn and Mia, you were absolutely pulling up in 2013 for The Best Man Holiday and again in 2022 for The Best Man: The Final Chapters. Hell, I even bought The Best Man: Unfinished Business.
