‘Frasier’ Bosses Explain Why Roz Was the Perfect Original Cast Cameo for the Season 1 Finale (Exclusive)

Warning: The following contains spoilers for the Frasier Season 1 finale, "Reindeer Games."

The Frasier revival couldn't conclude without a big guest star appearance from the original cast. Bebe Neuwirth appeared in Episode 7 as Freddy's (Jack Cutmore-Scott) mother and Frasier's (Kelsey Grammer) ex Lilith Sternin, but Lilith and Frasier's relationship originated on Cheers. The finale episode, "Reindeer Games," brought back Roz Doyle (Peri Gilpin) from Frasier's Seattle days to help boost the psychiatrist's Christmas spirits.

In true Frasier spirit, he tried to throw a Christmas dinner party to distract from his grief during his first Christmas without his father. As all Frasier dinner parties tend to go, it was a disaster, but Freddy knew that Frasier didn't need a fancy meal — he needed family. So Roz arrived in the nick of time to pluck Frasier out of the dumps and give him a reality check about Freddy's intentions during the party.

"We always knew we wanted Roz at some point. We just wanted to make sure that it was worthwhile and it wasn’t just a shameless, 'Hey look at this person from the old show, enjoy!'" executive producer Joe Cristalli explained to The Messenger. "We wanted to make sure it actually felt like it carried some weight, but we didn't want to do it right away because we wanted the show to walk on its own two feet before we paraded in guest stars from the old show. Once we got to the finale, we knew we were going to have the subtext of Martin and what Frasier was going through. She seemed like the ideal person for Freddy to bring in to cheer up his dad."

Paramount+ has not officially announced a Season 2 for the revival, but Cristalli and his fellow executive producer Chris Harris are already considering their options for more people from Frasier's past to bring into the show.

"There's so many folks from KCL. [We can bring in people] not only from Frasier, but we also have Cheers," Harris teased. "The exciting thing is those are folks who are, in theory, in town. In Episode 5, Frasier explains why he's not ready yet to go back and say hi to those folks. At some point he will be, or at some point, he'll run into them in some fun way. How great is it for us to have this back bench for folks to use."

Harris added that there's 20 years worth of people from Frasier's life in Chicago that the audience has never met. "It's fun to have this nearly 20-year gap that we can unfold at our leisure. Obviously, the present and his relationship with Freddy is the most important thing in the center of our show, but we can use his show to have fun in that episode. We have almost two decades of Frasier Crane's life that we can unfold slowly, and people can come back not just from Seattle, not just Boston, but Chicago. We have got to have his sidekick Gilby [Patrick Rafferty] back."

Who else from Frasier's past will return if there's a Season 2? Only time will tell.

Frasier Season 1 is now streaming on Paramount+.