Don’t have time to rewatch all of Arrested Development before the new season premieres this Sunday? Well, we put together this handy guide to where each character left off plot-wise at the end of Season Three, including all the Bluths and some significant non-Bluths, to jog your memory. Creator Mitch Hurwitz has said, the new season will explain what each character has been up to in the seven years since the show went off the air, so it’ll be important to know where everybody was in 2006 so that you won’t be totally lost when Netflix drops 15 new episodes this weekend.
Michael Bluth
Michael was celebrating getting his father’s charges dropped and achieving a “risky” rating from the CNBC finance show Mad Money in the finale. He leaves the family party to take care of his romantically frustrated son George Michael, who stole GOB’s yacht after finding out GOB is dating his ex Ann. When the Bluth party is raided by the SEC and Lucille is about to be arrested, Michael decides not to help his family for once. He elects to head take the yacht, with George Michael, to George Sr.’s hideaway in Cabo San Lucas since they have a full tank of gas and $500,000 in cashier’s checks. They later find that George Sr. is stowed away in the boat’s cabin with them and will be joining them in Cabo.
Lindsay Bluth Fünke
In the final episode of Season Three, Lindsay found out from Stan Sitwell that she’s adopted and that she’s actually 40, three years older than she thought she was. George and Lucille adopted her in order to stick it to their competitors, the Sitwells, who were planning on adopting Lindsay. Still in an open marriage with Tobias in the finale, Lindsay tried to talk Michael into marrying her upon finding out she’s not his blood relative, planning to divorce Tobias in order to do so. Michael turned her down, but she still spoke about her ambitions to marry him afterwards.
GOB Bluth
GOB had been living on The C-Word, the yacht he purchased when he was the Bluth Company’s President, and dating George Michael’s Christian teenage ex-girlfriend Ann. GOB and Ann got together after he awarded her a third place prize at an inner beauty pageant in the episode “Notapusy,” and the two had not consummated their relationship, only going to “second base” as the narrator points out. George Michael punched GOB when he found out about his relationship with Ann and took his yacht, presumably leaving GOB homeless. Later on, GOB finds out Linday isn’t his biological sister and that she’s romantically interested in Michael, so his competitive streak with Michael causes him to hit on her, only to have her physically fight him.
George Michael Bluth
A couple episodes before the finale, George Michael and Maeby accidentally got married after taking part in what they thought was a fake wedding to entertain Alzheimer’s patients in a hospital. In the show’s penultimate episode, George Michael and Maeby got “drunk” on fake wine that they thought was real, and he told her he suspects she’s adopted. The two made out, getting to “second base,” only to have Tobias obliviously tell them that Maeby is in fact the biological child of himself and Lindsay. George Michael spends the rest of the series avoiding Maeby, opting to try to get his ex Ann back. Upon finding his uncle GOB stole Ann from him, George Michael punches GOB and takes his yacht, finding himself piloting it around aimlessly on the Pacific. Michael catches up to him and joins him on the yacht where he informs George Michael that Lindsay is adopted, making Maeby, in fact, not his blood relative. Michael convinces George Michael to come to George Sr.’s secret hideaway in Cabo with him, only to later find that George Sr. is onboard the yacht with them.
Maeby Fünke
As mentioned above, Maeby made out with George Michael in the second-to-last episode and has yet to find out that they’re not related because of her mother’s adoption. After all of her peers found out she was only 16 years old and she conned her way into her job as an exec at the movie studio Tantamount, Maeby feared she was about to be fired. She found out that she wasn’t being fired and that the studio has received 10 offers on the TV rights to her story. Maeby spent the finale getting family members to sign release forms for her to turn her life into a TV show, only to pitch it to Ron Howard at the very end of the show and be told by him that he doesn’t see her story as a TV show. “Maybe a movie.”
Buster Bluth
Not much has changed for Buster by the show’s Season Three finale, but he did fall off the boat at a family party, only to find himself in the ocean confronting the same loose seal who bit off his left hand – the last image we saw of him.
Tobias Fünke
At the end of Season Three, Tobias was still a struggling actor in an unhappy open marriage with Lindsay who is oblivious to his own homosexuality.
George Bluth Sr.
Thanks to Michael’s efforts, George Bluth was cleared of treason and his other charges, and Lucille was revealed to be the one behind all of his crimes and the one controlling the company. George tricked Oscar into impersonating him at the family’s stockholders’ party, which is interrupted by an SEC raid targeting Lucille. George was found to be stowed away in GOB’s yacht, which Michael and George Michael were taking it to George’s hideaway in Cabo, which features an exact replica of the Newport Beach/Iraq model home.
Lucille Bluth
In the finale, Lucille was revealed to be the mastermind behind the Bluth Company and its crimes. At a stockholders’ party on the Queen Mary, she sold the company to Stan Sitwell, who had been trying to take it over, for 12% above market value after CEO Michael cried during his speech and made the company look bad. Seconds later, the boat was surrounded by the SEC because Lucille’s adopted son Annyong had ratted her out to the government to get revenge for her ruining his grandfather’s business and having him deported to Korea. Lucille tried to make a break for it, but it looked like she was about to be sent to prison by the time the episode concluded.
Supporting characters:
Oscar Bluth
At the tail end of the last episode, Oscar found out he had been conned by his brother George into impersonating him one more time. George tricked him into attending the stockholders’ party on the Queen Mary by using free food to lure him there, with George somehow expecting the party to be interrupted by SEC arrest(s).
Barry Zuckerkorn
Bluth attorney Barry Zuckerkorn was fired by Michael after years of incompetence in the Season Three opener “The Cabin Show,” and he wasn’t seen for the rest of the series. Since the Bluths were his only clients, he began contemplating a career in prostitution after he was fired. Zuckerkorn was written out of the series so that actor Henry Winkler could star in the short-lived CBS sitcom Out of Practice.
Annyong
Annyong stopped appearing regularly midway through Season Two after Lucille sent him the Milford School, where he learned to be neither seen nor heard. He spent his time surveilling the Bluths to gather evidence on them, ratting Lucille out to the SEC in revenge for her stealing his grandfather’s invention of the frozen banana decades earlier and deporting him to Korea.
Stan Sitwell
Bluth competitor Stan Sitwell bought the company from Lucille for 12% above market value at George Sr.’s exoneration party onboard the Queen Mary.
Lucille Austero
Lucille 2 hasn’t been seen since the Season Two episode “Ready, Aim, Marry Me,” in which she sold her stake in the Bluth Company to Stan Sitwell, who ended up buying the company outright the following season anyway.
Kitty Sanchez
Kitty fled with Tobias to Reno at the end of Season Two, but she left him for George Sr., who was hiding out by traveling with the Blue Man Group at the time. Like Barry Zuckerkorn, she hasn’t been seen since the Season Three premiere.
Steve Holt
Steve Holt stopped appearing midway through Season Three after finding out that GOB was his biological father. Maeby broke up with him in earlier in the season after finding out they were cousins, but they turned out not to be blood relatives due to Lindsay being adopted.
Ann Veal
Ann was last seen in the Season Three finale, screaming after George Michael punched GOB, whom she was dating when the series ended originally.
Franklin
GOB’s puppet Franklin was redyed to his natural color in Season Three and was last seen acting as Nellie’s (Justine Bateman) pimp “Frank” with GOB in the episode before the finale.
