Summary

• Luke Perry left Beverly Hills, 90210 to seek more mature roles after playing Dylan McKay for five full seasons.
• Perry returned to the show in season 9 after those roles failed to come to fruition.
• If he hadn't returned to the show and made peace with Dylan, he might not have had the career that he did.

There are very specific reasons for Luke Perry's Beverly Hills, 90210 exit and his subsequent return just three years later. Perry starred in the long-running teen drama, which lasted for ten seasons between 1990 and 2000, as Dylan McKay, the brooding bad boy with a heart of gold. Of the eleven members of the main cast that debuted in season 1, Luke Perry was the sixth to leave the show when he exited midway through season 6 in 1995.

This came after the departure of Beverly Hills, 90210 cast members Douglas Emerson (Scott) in season 2 and Shannen Doherty (Brenda) after season 4, as well as the simultaneous exit of James Eckhouse (Jim), Carol Potter (Cindy), and Gabrielle Carteris (Andrea) after season 5. However, while the latter three all guest starred on later episodes, Perry was the only star to ever return to the show permanently. He returned in 1998, early in season 9, and remained on the show through the series finale, though he was billed as a special guest star for the remainder of his appearances.

Luke Perry Wanted To Explore More Mature Roles After Beverly Hills, 90210

The Star Had Already Played Dylan McKay For Five Years

After playing Dylan McKay for five full seasons, Luke Perry left Beverly Hills, 90210 in an effort to seek out more mature roles. This was in keeping with comments he'd already made while he was still part of the main cast. During an Entertainment Weekly interview from 1994 about his cowboy biopic 8 Seconds, he said that his hope if the show ended with season 5 was that he could "get back to ground zero as an actor." Read his full quote below:

The best-case scenario for me is to get back to ground zero as an actor, where people aren't completely married to this concept of the television show, yet they haven't seen me do anything terribly horrendous on celluloid yet, either.

Perry did take on a variety of very different projects during the three years he spent off the show. This includes a 13-episode voice gig playing the villain Sub-Zero in the animated adaptation Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, a part as a man who decides to end his own life by hiring an assassin in the dramedy American Strays, and a small role in The Fifth Element as Billy. However, his return to Beverly Hills, 90210 became more and more inevitable as the 1990s wore on.

Luke Perry’s Best Mature Roles Wouldn’t Come Until After The End Of Beverly Hills, 90210

Returning To Dylan McKay Was The Right Move For Perry At The Time

Ultimately, Perry did not immediately find the type of role he was looking for once he was on his own, away from the show that made him a star. The first sign that things might not be going the way the actor wanted was the fact that his first live-action role upon exiting 90210 was playing himself in the Italian comedy Vacanze di Natale '95. The fact that the role was inherently predicated on his fame from playing Dylan McKay spoke to the way that audiences were primed to view him at the time.

He eventually found a variety of more dynamic and layered adult roles...

Although he didn't know it, his best mature roles were ahead of him. Once he had played out Dylan's story through to the end and audiences had a chance to say goodbye to the character along with the rest of the main cast of the show, he eventually found a variety of more dynamic and layered adult roles. Over the years, this included a 10-episode stint on HBO's prison drama Oz as Reverend Jeremiah Cloutier and a role as a struggling ex-musician opposite Nicholas Galitzine in the 2014 British indie movie The Beat Beneath My Feet.

Luke Perry Was Never Able To Leave Dylan McKay Behind Completely (And That’s OK)

Perry's Time On 90210 Opened New Career Doors Before His Death

Perry's comfort level with where his career had brought him by the late 2000s was proven by the fact that he declined to reprise his role in the CW reboot 90210, which ran between 2008 and 2013. Per Today, he stated in a 2008 Billy Bush Show interview that "it’s just not something that I’ve thought about." Additionally, per UPI, an interview the same year with Aftonbladet revealed he had made peace with his iconic role, saying that "I'm going to be linked with him until I die, but that's actually just fine. I created Dylan McKay. He's mine."

Stars who did reprise their original roles in 90210 included Jennie Garth, Shannen Doherty, Tori Spelling, and Joe E. Tata.

If he had not reached that state of mind, the Beverly Hills, 90210 star may not have accepted the role that caused his second wave of major success before his death in 2019. In 2017, his career renaissance began when he took the role of Archie's father Fred Andrews in Riverdale, a show that cast many actors with iconic nostalgic roles including Scream's Skeet Ulrich and The Breakfast Club's Molly Ringwald. This major role brought the star back into the public eye and was followed by more opportunities, including an appearance in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood.

Source: EW, Today, & UPI