Will Juliette return to Nashville season 6? Don’t worry too much…

Will Hayden Panettiere return to Nashville season 6? This may sound like a ridiculous question at first, but as of late the series on CMT hasn’t really done a whole lot to ease some people’s concerns. After all, the Juliette character was last seen refusing to go home with Avery after joining the super-creepy cult, and in following that up she wasn’t in the midseason finale at all. There’s a definite concern that the character’s presence is getting minimized, in some shape or form, as we are entering the home stretch of the series.

Ultimately, it’s probably not best to interpret her limited screen time that way judging from some of the latest comments from some of the show’s team behind the scenes. This may just be more of a case of producers figuring out the right course of the story and, for now, that included not having Hayden Panettiere around for a while. Sometimes, there are issues that you need to figure out yourself and this could be a case of that. Juliette clearly needs to learn a little bit more when it comes to what she wants out of her life — we don’t think she’s going to find it through that cult, but nobody else is going to be able to convince her of anything there! It is something that she has to figure out more of her own accord.

In terms of Juliette’s immediate future (after all, there are only eight more episodes left in the series), Nashville executive producer Marshall Herskovitz had the following to say to TVLine:

I can easily say that [Panettiere is] Number One on the call sheet, in the parlance of our business, and she’s such a central part of this show and we are not in any way going to slight her story. I think I can say that.

Related – Want to see when Nashville season 6 is going to return to CMT with new episodes?

While that may be a fairly-veiled statement the implication of it still feels pretty darn clear: There are no long-term plans for the Juliette character to go anywhere. Her absence at the moment seems to be a little bit more of a byproduct of just circumstance. The teaser for the second half of the season showed that she will be around, and a big part of the excitement for us is going to be seeing how that happens and what her relationship is like next. We want to believe that she and Avery could have a future, but there are also fair questions as to whether or not she really deserves Avery after what she’s put him through at this point. (Avery’s no saint, but what she’s done as of late is pretty devastating — he may just need to realize that she’s not of sound mind with this sort of heavy influence going on.)

How much of Juliette do you want to see on Nashville season 6 moving forward?

Be sure to share some of your thoughts in the comments below! Meanwhile, you can also like CarterMatt on Facebook in the event you want to get some other insight when it comes to the series. (Photo: CMT.)