New Girl Final Season: What We Know So Far

Zooey Deschanel, Max Greenfield and the rest of the New Girl gang dished on the final season

By Lauren Piester Jan 05, 2018 1:31 AMTags
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We may still be three months away from the premiere of the final season of New Girl, but we don't have to wait that long to find out what the loftmates are up to when the show picks up three years later.

The cast and creators took the stage for Fox's winter press tour to share a few secrets—most of which will not surprise you.

When we left off, Schmidt (Max Greenfield) and Cece (Hannah Simone) had found out they were pregnant, Winston (Lamorne Morris) had proposed to Aly (Nasim Pedrad) (and was about to call his dad), and Nick (Jake Johnson) and Jess (Zooey Deschanel) had finally found their way back together. When the show picks back up, it's three years later, and a lot of things are different but a lot of things are very much the same.

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As Greenfield says, " a lot of the storylines pick up somewhat where we left them off, only three years later."

Schmidt and Cece: Their finale pregnancy is now a three year-old daughter, and she's the apple of Schmidt's eye. While Cece works as a modeling agent, he's a stay-at-home dad, and Greenfield calls him a "helicopter parent." Creator Liz Meriwether countered that with "What's bigger than a helicopter?"   

"I think he's just completely enamored with this child and wants to spend every waking minute with her," Greenfield explained.

Nick and Jess: Zooey Deschanel described Nick as a "very successful YA author," and Jess hasn't been working for a while, so she's been joining him on book tours.

"Nick and Jess are still kind of in this…they're not married, they don't have kids, there's room for growth," Deschanel said of the pair, whose last relationship attempt didn't go all that well, but who are both a little more grown up now.

Winston and Aly: They're happily married and living together, and while that original phone call to his estranged dad didn't happen, we will meet that dad this season. And he's played by none other than J.B. Smoove.

Ferguson: "He's chillin," Morris said when asked about Winston's fan favorite pet cat, but Liz Meriwether refused to say more about his role this season, other than the fact that he gets an entire episode dedicated to him.

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Someone dies: We also learned that there's going to be a "heartbreaking" death this season, and when asked if this fact was related to the last fact in this list, Meriwether mostly just turned herself around in her chair. So take from that what you will.

Another Round: Everybody's favorite U.S.-history themed drinking game True American will not be forgotten in the final season.

But perhaps the biggest change of all is that those three years have really turned the entire gang into a bunch of actual adults, which provided a whole new world for the cast and writers.

"This time around, I felt like this season was this kind of…it's different. It feels like they're kind of grown up, so the engine of the show is more about this group of people as adults with kids and jobs and responsibilities. It's a lot more fun to watch.

New Girl returns Tuesday, April 10 at 9:30 p.m. on Fox.