Saved By The Bell's 'New Class' Talk OG Series, Season 2 Callbacks And More

While Peacock's Saved by the Bell revival catches up with the class of '93, it's primarily focused on a new generation. Bayside's current student body includes Zack and Kelly's son Mac (Mitchell Hoog), Jessie's son Jamie (Belmont Cameli), and fellow classmates Daisy (Haskiri Velazquez), Aisha (Alycia Pascual-Peña), Lexi (Josie Totah) and Devante (Dexter Darden).

So, just how well does the new New Class — most of whom were born after the original series ended its run — know the OG SBTB? Read on to find out, and get insight into Season 2 of the streaming revival...

Alycia Pascual-Peña, 22, plays Daisy's BFF (and fellow Douglas transplant) Aisha Garcia. Whereas in Season 1, "she's kind of the 'it girl' — she knows who she is in her relationship [with Jamie], and she knows who she is playing football — it's all stripped away from her after the pandemic," Peña tells TVLine. "It forces her to reckon with how she identifies.

"I was really happy that we see Aisha kind of go on her individual journey [in Season 2]," apart from her friendship with Daisy, Peña says. We she how see "deals with adversity" and how it "forces her to evolve, and it forces her to live her truth, which is really exciting." (For more on Aisha's relationship with Chloe, click here.)

Belmont Cameli, 23, plays Jessie's dimwitted son Jamie. Ahead of Season 1, the actor admitted that he "hadn't watched [the original] growing up," but he "knew the scope of the show — how impactful it was, and how it changed the Saturday-morning sitcom game.

"When I got the audition, I made sure to dive into all those highlight episodes to get a feel for what it was like at Bayside back in the day, and what it may be like now," he said at the time. "It was very cool to go back and watch, then meet [the legacy cast] immediately after. It was surreal."

In Season 2, Episode 9, Cameli gets a taste of his TV mom's dance with the caffeine monster. In order to maintain his energy throughout Bayside's dance-a-thon, Jamie downs several energy drinks. "I'm so excited!" he exclaims, before hurling on Devante's kicks. 

"As soon as I read it at the table read, I was like, 'Here we go! A little resurgence of another classic moment here,'" Cameli told us ahead of Season 2. "It's so cool to be carrying on that legacy, and to have, like, a legacy scene [reinterpreted]. That was the coolest thing, and that episode was an absolute blast for me. Jamie totally unravels, and I had a really good time doing that."

Dexter Darden, 29, plays fellow Douglas transplant Devante — and unlike his castmates, he "loved" the original Saved by the Bell growing up.

"I'm the oldest of the six of us, so I remember watching the reruns," he told us ahead of Season 1. "I think I still have an 'I Love Zack Morris' t-shirt somewhere in my closet.

"Saved by the Bell was one of those shows that I could immediately relate to," Darden said at the time. "Even though I was a kid from the Philadelphia area, and I loved the Fresh Princes of the world, I went to a private school that was multi-cultured and multidimensional, so seeing a TV show with Lisa Turtle as a Black female, or Mario Lopez as a Latino male, it was like, 'Wow, this is a really diverse group of people who are all going to the same school, and going through the problems that I can relate to.' I was big fan."

In Season 1, Devante subverted expectations when he rejected Slater's attempts to recruit him for Bayside's football team and instead joined the drama club. And he made quite the first impression when he belted out a Whitney Houston classic in the series premiere's closing scene. In Season 2, the working-class teen gets a taste of that Bayside privilege when his relationship with rich girlfriend Nadia grows more serious. 

"In Season 1, Devante was kind of just exploring this new space, getting settled at Bayside and figuring out what he wanted to do," Darden says in a new interview. "In Season 2, he's still trying to finding himself. But now that he's found love, he's opening up his mind to being able to find love that he is not usually in close proximity to — meaning, he was probably used to finding love with someone that he could relate to, whether it be financially or culturally, or just in the surroundings of his usual neighborhood. Opening up those doors and crossing over — visiting Nadia and spending time with her family — he's beginning to understand that even if you have privilege, that doesn't mean that you don't have problems. So, how can we find mutual ground there?

"I think a lot of people are afraid to talk about tough things [like privilege]," Darden says. "Devante is not afraid to push that envelope. Neither is Saved By the Bell."

Haskiri Velazquez plays Douglas transplant Daisy Jiménez — and she'll be the first to tell you that Daisy bites off more than she can chew. 

"Daisy's a perfectionist, so she likes to think that she can take a lot on," Velazquez tells TVLine. "But she really can't."

In Season 2, she juggles her roles as friend and student body president, as she works alongside Mac to get Bayside into the Southern California School Spirt Competition. She's also navigating a new relationship with Gil Vatooley.

"Daisy's really trying to find herself in Season 2," Velazquez says. "She's trying to understand how much slack she can give herself, not always thinking about 'school, school, school.' She's allowing herself to have fun and create new relationships."

Of course, all of this means she has less time for BFF Aisha.

"I think the relationship with Aisha [this season] relies on the fact that we just grew up together, we know each other, and we don't need to be talking every single day to understand that I got her back and she has my back," Velazquez explains. "This whole season, it's about just making sure that whenever she does need me, I'm there, but she doesn't need me every single day and I don't need her every single day... It's that kind of relationship where you know that you're always there for one another, no matter how many things you got going on."

Josie Totah, 20, plays popular girl Lexi. Ahead of Season 1, she told us that she was "definitely aware of the cultural impact that the original Saved by the Bell had — for instance, the character of Lisa, and how revolutionary that was to have a Black woman of her affluence on television." 

Having watched only the occasional rerun, Totah decided to binge the web-series Zack Morris Is Trash, which greatly influenced the tone of the revival. "So much of our show is bringing back everything from the original, and taking all that you loved from the original, but also making fun of everything wrong with the original," she said at the time. "We were in a less cultured, less evolved era."

In Season 2, when West Beverly bans a trans girl from playing on the school's soccer team, a reluctant Lexi feels compelled to do her part for the LGBTQ community. She opts to rewrite the school play as a way "to solve transphobia the way Hamilton solved racism," which proves to be an impossible endeavor. But the undertaking forces Lexi to reckon with her privilege and the fact that she's never had to deal with some of the challenges that face other, less fortunate trans women.

"Everyone has privilege in some capacity, and Lexi has had this privilege to not have to face, you know, certain obstacles in her life because of her socioeconomic status, and because of her popularity at school," Totah says in a new interview. "Getting to throw something at her that forces her to reckon with that, and to face that privilege, was very fun." (For more on Lexi's Season 2 storyline, click here.)

Mitchell Hoog, 22, plays Zack and Kelly's scheming son Mac Morris. Ahead of Season 1, he told us that he was aware of the original T-NBC sitcom, but he hadn't seen it. "It was a little bit before my time, but I was aware of The Max and all of that," he said at the time. (Feel old yet?)

Unlike some of his castmates, Hoog decided not to go back and binge the original series. "I really wanted to have a fresh take on it, rather than copy something [I saw]," he explained. "I made myself familiar with 'Preppy' and all the little Easter eggs, but definitely didn't study it, so to say."

In Season 2, Mac tries to escape his father's shadow and cement his own legacy at Bayside.

"I feel like the tone of this season for Mac compared to last season is completely different," Hoog says in a new interview. "It's a lot more about exploring who Mac is separate from Zack, which is a lot of fun." Along the way, he receives "help from all my friends," including Douglas transplants Daisy, Aisha and Devante, "who still check me in the show, still check my privilege, which always brings me back to Square A."