Michelle Obama will guest-star on the final season of Black-ish

The final season of Black-ish is bringing on a very special guest star who can certainly relate to saying goodbye after an eight-year run.

Official social media accounts for the ABC sitcom announced Thursday that former First Lady Michelle Obama will be appearing on the show when it returns midseason.

The announcement states that the series is "honored" to have the "trailblazer" on it, and includes a photo of Obama with the full cast dressed in formalwear.

Premiering in 2014, in the middle of President Barack Obama's second term, Black-ish has long made reference to the first Black First Family, with the Johnsons even dressing up as the Obamas in the second-season Halloween episode, "Jacked o' Lantern."

The show's most memorable nod to Obama was probably the poignant 2016 episode "Hope," which used archival footage of the former president's inauguration during a monologue in which patriarch Dre Johnson (Anthony Anderson) explained to his children how fearful he was that the day would end in tragedy given the history of progressive Black leaders in the United States being assassinated.

Michelle Obama's appearance in the new season will likely be under more cheerful circumstances, but it provides another example of how the consistently Emmy-nominated comedy is able to balance lots of laughs with incisive commentary on the movement for social justice and equality in America.

Black-ish returns for its eighth and final season in 2022.

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