It is currently unclear whether AJ Michalka’s Lainey will appear in The Goldbergs season 10 finale, but there are numerous reasons that the supporting character’s return would make perfect sense for the long-running family sitcom’s series finale. The Goldbergs will end in May 2023 with the final episode of season 10 acting as the series finale. As the show reaches the end of its 10-year run, there are a handful of plot lines that The Goldbergs must wrap up. Chief among these is the contentious relationship between Troy Gentile’s Barry and AJ Michalka’s Lainey, a "will they, won’t they" dynamic that began way back in season 2.
While The Goldbergs teased Barry’s redemption in season 10, episode 17, “A Flyer's Path to Victory,” by this stage, the story had been a long time coming. Barry has always been one of the more intense and immature characters featured in The Goldbergs but, as he aged over the show’s 10 seasons, his antics became more absurd and less relatable. As of The Goldbergs season 10, Barry is a second-year medical student. However, despite his advanced age and academic prowess, he remains an immature and childish character. That said, viewers already know that Barry eventually mellows out due to the short-lived spinoff of The Goldbergs, Schooled.
4 Barry and Lainey End Up Together After The Goldbergs
Set in the ‘90s, The Goldbergs spinoff Schooled proved that Barry and his first love Lainey eventually reconnected after years apart when Barry showed up in season 2 as Lainey’s love interest. While The Goldbergs season 10 sees Barry dating Joanne, viewers already know that this relationship can’t last since Schooled depicted Barry single again in the ‘90s. As such, The Goldbergs supporting star actor AJ Michalka is right to say that The Goldbergs series finale needs to reunite Lainey and Barry. Per a ScreenRant interview with Michalka, the supporting star said that “My dream is that I'll be in the show finale… I would at least want to be in the final moments.”
Since Schooled already proved that Barry and Lainey do get back together eventually, this means Lainey belongs in Barry’s final send-off. Not only that, but Schooled season 2’s COVID-limited shooting schedule and its cancelation mean that The Goldbergs season 10 could give Barry and Lainey the romantic ending that they have until now been deprived of. Adam’s romance in The Goldbergs season 10 set up a perfect opportunity for the show’s hero to move out of his mother’s house, so the least that the series finale can do for his brother Barry is confirm that he, too, eventually ends up back with the love of his life.
3 Barry and Lainey’s Relationship Defined His Goldbergs Story
When viewers met Barry, he was an immature teen lusting after his sister’s friend Lainey. Since then, Barry and Lainey spent 7 seasons of The Goldbergs secretly dating, making their relationship public, breaking up, reuniting, attempting a long-distance relationship, breaking up and reuniting again, getting engaged, breaking off their engagement, and finally reuniting once more in Schooled. A big part of why The Goldbergs focused less on Adam's character in later seasons was because Barry and Lainey’s plot came to define the show’s multi-season arc. This was something that The Goldbergs season 3, episode 10, “A Christmas Story,” made into a meta-story when Adam worried about Barry was forgetting about him.
2 Schooled’s Barry and Lainey Ending Didn’t Work
Since Barry and Lainey’s story was so central to The Goldbergs, it is reasonable for fans to expect a satisfying ending to this plot. However, viewers didn’t get this with the Schooled season 2 finale due to unfortunate real-life circumstances. Thanks to COVID, Troy Gentile couldn’t appear as Barry in the finale and the spinoff was canceled after this episode. This resulted in Schooled ending with Lainey telling viewers that she broke up with Barry offscreen before the finale. Schooled’s Barry and Lainey ending was a damp squib that turned their seasons-long story into a dispiriting shaggy dog story that went nowhere since the spinoff was expecting a season 3 renewal.
However, The Goldbergs season 10 is intended to be the final season of the sitcom. As such, The Goldbergs can wrap up its story (and, specifically, the love story of Barry and Lainey) better than Schooled. The best way to pull this off would be for the ending of The Goldbergs series finale to tell viewers where all of the core characters ended up decades later since this narrative device was frequently employed in ‘80s coming-of-age dramedies. Not only would this fit the show’s tone, but it would also allow the creators to confirm that the couple reunited (especially after The Goldbergs season 10's weird Murray twist wasted Lainey’s earlier cameo).
1 The Goldbergs Season 10 Could Redeem Barry and Lainey’s Plot
The Goldbergs season 10 finale should confirm that Barry and Lainey did eventually end up together since this conclusion was seemingly the logical end game of their plots in both Schooled and The Goldbergs. While the Schooled season 2 finale did admittedly break up Lainey and Barry, this was likely because the spinoff hoped to earn another season and the show would almost certainly have eventually reunited the pair given their chemistry and their lengthy history. Similarly, although The Goldbergs seasons 9 and 10 have devoted a lot of screen time to Barry’s relationship with Joanne, this story hasn’t been anywhere near as pivotal to the show as Barry and Lainey’s earlier pairing.
As such, The Goldbergs season 10 finale should clarify the couple’s fate once and for all. While The Goldbergs always had to end with season 10, the show now has only a few episodes left to set up its perfect ending and tie up its loose ends. While these outings could include Barry and Joanne’s breakup, this doesn’t necessarily need to happen before the end of the series. After all, viewers know that Barry ends up dating Lainey in the ’90s, so his breakup with Joanne is a foregone conclusion. What The Goldbergs does need to clarify is whether the couple ended up together in the future, which would ideally mean bringing back AJ Michalka's Lainey.