All American Recap: Here’s How Taye Diggs Made an Emotional Return as Billy Baker

All American‘s 100th episode won’t air until next week, but the show hit another milestone in the meantime on Monday: the return of Taye Diggs, who reprised his role of Billy Baker in a highly sentimental outing.

At the time of Billy’s tragic death in Season 5, Diggs told TVLine that he would “100%” be open to playing the character again via flashbacks or dream sequences — and Billy’s appearances on Monday were perhaps a combination of the two. At the top of the episode, Laura Baker gave Jordan and Olivia letters that Billy had written to them when they were just babies, which he’d planned to have his kids open after they’d graduated from college. But when Olivia hit a roadblock with her biography of Billy, insisting that it needed an extra “something” before she could pass it to her editor, Laura opted to give the twins their letters now, in hopes they’d get a little guidance from their late father.

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And Spencer wasn’t left out of the reminiscing: Though he was reluctant to accept it at first, Spencer was given Billy’s journal, where he had logged all of his feelings about recruiting Spencer and bringing him to live at the Baker household back in Season 1. As Jordan, Olivia and Spencer all read Coach Baker’s words, Diggs appeared on screen to recite them aloud; unfortunately, that meant no one actually got to talk to Billy during his brief resurrection, but those emotional moments still landed.

To perhaps no one’s surprise, the advice in Billy’s letters and journal dovetailed nicely with all of the current obstacles in Olivia’s, Jordan’s and Spencer’s lives. Jordan, who had been living in his dad’s shadow a bit during this current GAU football season, started to think more seriously about entering the NFL draft because he wants to, and not just because of the full-circle potential to get drafted by the same team that recruited his dad. Plus, after expressing his draft desires to Coach Mac — who later said on a podcast that Jordan could fail in the NFL if he’s drafted too early — Jordan came to (finally!) realize that his current coach is only looking out for himself and has no interest in championing his players.

Spencer, meanwhile, got perfectly timed advice from Billy about how to handle taking in a teenage boy, which Spencer found himself doing after South Crenshaw student Deion quit the football team and allegedly got kicked out by his sister for doing so. As Spencer contended with the same teenage surliness from Deion that he once gave to the Baker family, he used Billy’s words to help Deion and his sister patch things up — but Deion is not going back to the football team, thank goodness.

And finally, after working up the nerve to open the envelope, Olivia read her letter from her dad, in which he reminded her that he’ll always believe in her, even when she doubts herself. In an especially moving “lightbulb” moment for Olivia, Billy told her that although he dreaded having to share her light with the world upon her college graduation, he would do it because he loves her so much. Later, Olivia shared with Spencer that she never got to say goodbye to her dad, and working on his biography had been like getting him back, in a way; to send the book to her editor would mean having to share Billy with the world, and lose him all over again — but she’d come to realize that sharing Billy’s light was what she needed to do, and she sent that fateful PDF to her (exceedingly patient) editor.

Don’t worry about Laura, by the way! When Spencer first tried to let Laura keep Billy’s journal for herself, she insisted that she talked to Billy every day, in her own way. At the end of the hour, once Billy’s letters had sufficiently helped the kids, Laura kissed a framed photo of Billy and thanked him for being there for their children — and though she couldn’t see him, Billy briefly appeared on the other side of his and Laura’s bed, beaming at his wife.

What did you think of Taye Diggs’ return, All American fans? Grade the episode in our poll below, then hit the comments to elaborate!

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