Daria Cameos in ‘Beavis and Butt-Head’ Finale After Disappearing for Two Decades

Twenty-six years after she left Highland for good, Daria finally returned to Beavis and Butt-Head — to kill Beavis and Butt-Head.

Mike Judge’s Paramount+ revival series of his iconic and decidedly 1990s animated classic Beavis and Butt-Head completed its second season at its new home today, with the last two episodes, “Abduction” and “Sleepover,” releasing concurrently on the streaming platform. Mike Judge’s Beavis and Butt-Head — as the new series is titled — is both a return to form and a fitting dose of nostalgia for all the slackers and snarkers who fell in love with the original series, and in the penultimate episode, the long-awaited return of spin-off star Daria Morgendorffer finally arrived.

In “Abduction,” alternate dimension versions of the titular protagonists face a tribunal in the “Smart Universe” for failing in their mission to explore and study the multiverse, instead choosing to “run up an expense account on space nachos and intergalactic pornography.” The duo faces a death penalty handed down by a collection of “smart” versions of classic characters from the original series, including the acerbic, dark-haired Daria, who was pretty much always the smart person casting judgment on Beavis and Butt-Head in the first place.

As the clip revealed, Smart Beavis and Smart Butt-Head get off with a suspended sentence provided they abduct an unwitting human from “Normal Earth,” so Smart Daria doesn’t have to execute her normal dimension acquaintances whom she typically tolerated slightly more than the rest of her classmates. 

The admittedly brief cameo marked Daria voice actor Tracy Grandstaff’s grand return to the character whom she hasn’t had the chance to play on-screen (or, you know, in the recording studio) in more than two decades. Now, we just have to wait for Paramount to greenlight Glenn Eichler and Susie Lewis Lynn’s Daria — does the “Smart Universe” have some TV executives they can spare?