‘Nashville’ Showrunner Reveals Why Beloved Character Returned in Series Finale

Spoilers ahead!

The series finale of Nashville aired Thursday, June 26 on CMT, and fans were able to catch one last glimpse of fan-favorite character Rayna James (Connie Britton), who was killed after a car accident in the show’s fifth season.

The late country icon returned in a flashback scene from her wedding night with widower Deacon (Charles Esten), with the couple reflecting on their relationship over the years. Deacon recalled the conversation just before stepping on stage at the Ryman Auditorium in the final minutes of the show’s finale.

“Sometimes, once in your life, somebody gets in your bloodstream,” Rayna tells him. “It doesn’t matter how much you’ve failed each other. You must choose each other. And I choose you, exactly the way you are. And I’m gonna love you forever.”

While the scene took place in the past, it was just recently shot, with Britton flying to Music City for two days to film the moment.

“She wanted to do it, and we wanted to do it,” showrunner Marshall Herskovitz told the Tennessean of Britton’s return. “And it was great to have her back. I think everybody had a wonderful time those two days, and just having her back brought some closure to the whole experience for everyone who’d been involved. It was very emotional.”

The show’s creator Callie Khouri told Variety that she couldn’t imagine ending the series without Britton.

“I knew that to end the show without her would have left a big hole in me, and I think it would have for a lot of fans, and I think, certainly, for the cast,” Khouri said. “Everybody wanted her to come back.”

Britton also appeared in a show-ending sequence that broke the fourth wall in which nearly every member of the show’s cast and crew, both past and present, joined each other on the Ryman Auditorium stage to sing a fan-favorite song from the show, “A Life That’s Good.”

“Rayna got to do the impossible,” Britton said in a statement. “She got to come back from the dead. I got to do the most wonderful [thing], which was to go back to my ‘Nashville’ family and celebrate all the hard work and love and care that went into that show.”

“Being on the Ryman stage, reunited with six years of cast and crew, is a moment I’ll cherish and never forget,” she added. “I am grateful.”

Khouri added that filming at the Ryman was “magical.”

“To be able to shoot the last scene on the last day of shooting at the Ryman — it just felt like some kind of magical thing happening for us,” she said. “It was absolutely real righteous closure.”

Photo Credit: CMT