NBC’s ‘Community’ season 5, episode 3 spoilers: Proof of John Oliver’s return!

The news that we have today is simple, but very much worth celebrating: You are not going to have to wait much longer at all to see John Oliver back on “Community” as Professor Ian Duncan.

It has been a rather long time since we have seen Oliver grace Greendale again, with one of main reasons for that being that he has been such a big part of “The Daily Show” world. But he took a break after hosting the show all summer to come back on the Dan Harmon series, and has since left Jon Stewart’s Comedy Central program outright in order to take on a new weekly show over on HBO. We know that he will have a pretty substantial role this season, and based on the photo here, it may also be possible that he joins the study group table for a while. Doesn’t this look like he is sitting there?

Oliver may be one of the people who helps to fill the void somewhat following Donald Glover’s exit in a few weeks, and that makes some sense. Jonathan Banks is the only real person that is being added to the show from the outside save for some guest appearances here and there, and he provides the faculty point of view that Troy had in the study group: He doesn’t often understand everything, and is in some ways co-dependent on other things (in his case either Jeff Winger or alcohol). Finally, he really is the perfect symbolism for what Greendale really stands for: Incompetence on all fronts. Oliver is great in the part, and there is no recurring player on the show who we have missed more (though Starburns is very close second place).

Also, the other photo that we have here should be a nice preview of a certain sort of “bandit” who is going to be tearing through Greendale’s halls, and doing some terrible things to the butts of many students. As you can tell here, Troy is clearly one of the traumatized victims who has to figure out how he is going to be able to move forward after such shock.