‘The Andy Griffith Show’ Ending Explained: Goodbye Mayberry?

Everybody knows that familiar whistling tune that opened up each episode of The Andy Griffith Show, which has far outlived the series itself. From 1960 until 1968, the Andy Griffith-led sitcom aired on CBS, in black-and-white originally and later in color, beginning with the sixth season. But how did this television giant end? Well, the way that Andy Taylor (Griffith) and the town of Mayberry said goodbye was less of a strong farewell and more of a, “we’ll see you next time!” Here’s how the show ended.

How Did ‘The Andy Griffith Show’ End?

After eight seasons and 250 episodes (if you include the original “pilot” that aired as part of The Dan Thomas Show), The Andy Griffith Show ended pretty strangely compared to how other longtime sitcoms bowed out. Beginning with Season 8, the series introduced newcomer Sam Jones (played by Ken Berry) to the community. A widowed farmer with a young son named Mike (Buddy Foster), echoing Andy and his boy Opie (Ron Howard) from the rest of the series, the Jones boys slowly took over The Andy Griffith Show, with the titular star taking a back seat throughout the final season. Longtime characters such as Aunt Bee (Frances Bavier), Helen Crump (Aneta Corsaut), Goober Pyle (George Lindsey), Howard Sprague (Jack Dodson), and even Deputy Barney Fife (Don Knotts, who had left the main cast after the fifth season), continued to appear. Still, the Jones boys were the rising stars.

“Mayberry R.F.D.,” the title of the series finale, follows Sam as he invites a friend of his from Italy to the United States to help him work on his farm. But when Mario Vincente (Gabriele Tinti) arrives, he brings with him his sister Sophia (Letícia Román) and his father (Bruno Della Santina), unbeknownst to Sam. Though Sam isn’t sure at first, he eventually lets all three Vincentes stay, only for it to become something of a disaster. Yet, despite the troubles they face, the Vincentes are beloved by the town and welcomed with open arms, including by Helen and Aunt Bee. While recurring characters like Goober and Howard show up here, noticeably absent for the series finale are Opie and Barney Fife, the two characters who fans wanted to see send off The Andy Griffith Show with its star.
Of course, Andy himself doesn’t appear much in this episode, and when he does, it’s only to guide Sam as he makes his decisions on whether to keep the Vincentes around. At the very end, it’s Andy who brings Sam to the town hall meeting, officially inducting the Vincentes into the community. In the series’ final moments, it’s not Andy and Opie and Aunt Bee we’re left with, it’s Sam, Mike, and their new house guests, which doesn’t particularly sit well with fans. Not unlike Gunsmoke’s anticlimactic series finale, The Andy Griffith Show’s final half-hour wasn’t so much a testament to the show’s impressive run, but rather a vehicle for the network to push audiences into the future.

Andy Griffith Returned Soon Enough

While “Mayberry R.F.D.” was the last episode that audiences saw aired on CBS, the last episode actually filmed was the penultimate episode, “A Girl For Goober,” which featured Andy, Opie, Helen, Goober, and Sam, while Aunt Bee was absent. According to MeTV, The Andy Griffith Show officially wrapped on February 21, 1968, and that evening, the cast and crew reunited in Toluca Lake for a wrap party to celebrate their 249 episodes together. Griffith, who had already had a tough time uttering his final line filmed for the show (a question he poses to Goober at the end of the episode), didn’t have much to say to his Andy Griffith Show family. “Well, it’s been awfully good,” he told them. “It’s been the best eight years of my life. I’ll see ya again.”

No doubt, it can be difficult to leave a group like that behind after so much time, but thankfully, Griffith was onto something. See, the series finale, “Mayberry R.F.D.” (R.F.D. stands for “Rural Free Delivery”), was titled that because in reality it was meant to be a backdoor pilot for a spinoff. The Andy Griffith Show had already spun off before with Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. (which starred Jim Nabors as Goober’s cousin Gomer, yes, the namesake of that Full Metal Jacket nickname), so ending the show with yet another series was an exciting prospect. Mayberry R.F.D. aired five months after The Andy Griffith Show ended, centering on Sam Jones and his family. Absent from the series was the Vincente family, who had been such a big part of the finale, though returning characters included Aunt Bee, Goober, Howard, and other Mayberry favorites. In many ways, Mayberry R.F.D. was more of a sequel series than a traditional spinoff like Gomer Pyle, and that was to its benefit.

But Mayberry R.F.D. wasn’t The Andy Griffith Show. Sure, Griffith returned as Andy Taylor in a handful of appearances in the first season and only once more thereafter, but he and Opie were no longer the central focus of the town’s happenings. Bringing back cast members from the original series certainly helped get

But What Happened to Andy Taylor in the End?

In the premiere episode of Mayberry R.F.D., Andy and Helen, after dancing around it for years, finally get married. That’s right, rather than end The Andy Griffith Show with a wedding, the writers opted to push audiences to the spinoff to see what happened next. Aptly titled “Andy and Helen Get Married,” the premiere brought back all the familiar faces who returned for the Mayberry continuation, as well as Ron Howard’s Opie and Don Knotts, who returned as Barney to celebrate his friend’s happiness. While Andy and Helen’s marriage is the event the episode centers around, it’s really more about Aunt Bee after Sam tries to convince her to live with him and Mike on the farm, an offer she decides to take up by the end.

After that, Andy returns to Mayberry a few times post-Andy Griffith, and in Season 1, still acts as the sheriff. But by Season 2, Andy and Helen have started a family of their own. Living in Charlotte, Andy took a job with the State Bureau of Investigation and around the same time, Helen gave birth to Andy, Jr. In “Andy’s Baby,” the family (sans Opie) returns to Mayberry to christen their newborn, which causes a stir among the usual suspects, who all fight to be the Godfather. Andy never appeared on Mayberry R.F.D. again, despite being credited for the third season episode “Alice and the Professor.” With Andy gone, Mayberry eventually pushed Goober into the role of sheriff, though the show didn’t run on much longer before cancellation.

‘Return to Mayberry’ Was the Proper Ending

Griffith, who later landed the lead role in Matlock, eventually returned to Mayberry again in the 1980s for a made-for-TV reunion feature that reunited a large bulk of The Andy Griffith Show’s original cast. Titled Return to Mayberry, the show acted as a crossover, continuation, and series finale for The Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., and Mayberry R.F.D., bringing back Andy, Opie, Barney, Gomer, Helen, and a host of others from the original shows. However, this time around, it’s Sam and his son Mike who are absent from the cast and aren’t mentioned (though, neither is Andy and Helen’s son, who would’ve been nearly 18 at the time). Another strange hole in Return to Mayberry is Aunt Bee, who is said to have died prior to the events of the film. Some have speculated that actress Frances Bavier was sick at the time and unable to return, while others claim she wasn’t interested (per MeTV). In any case, Favier died only a few years later.
Return to Mayberry ends the Andy Griffith saga with a bit more heart than “Mayberry R.F.D.” or the subsequent series ever could. For starters, Andy returns to his North Carolinian hometown to see Opie become a father and to run for sheriff again, only to learn that Barney is in the race. Not wishing to run against his friend, Andy stays out of it, helping Barney behind the scenes and even helping him find love with his former girlfriend, Thelma Lou (Betty Lynn).

Throughout the made-for-TV picture, Andy gets to deliver his own grandson and (unsurprisingly) gets re-elected as sheriff after Barney discovers that Andy was going to run originally. Ending on a much more satisfactory note than the Sam Jones-centered finale, Return to Mayberry was the last we saw of these characters,and somehow, that seemed alright. “Well, they were the best years of my life,” Andy Griffith explained concerning the original series in the 1993 reunion The Andy Griffith Show Reunion: Back to Mayberry, “the absolute best.”