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Stars From Saved By The Bell You Might Not Know Died

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Screech never got to see the reboot he helped inspire.

Nicki Swift’s retrospective on “Saved by the Bell” turns from nostalgia to grief fast, tracing the actors from the classic Bayside High sitcom who never lived to see the franchise get a second life on Peacock. The centerpiece is Dustin Diamond, the actor who spent more than a decade playing Samuel “Screech” Powers across four separate shows before cancer took him in early 2021. The video also widens the lens to the extended cast of guest and recurring players who walked the Bayside hallways over the years and are no longer around to talk about it.

• Dustin Diamond, who originated Screech in “Good Morning, Miss Bliss” and carried the role through the core series, “The College Years” and “The New Class,” died February 1, 2021, at age 44.
• Diamond’s death came just three weeks after doctors found he had stage 4 small-cell carcinoma following a hospitalization in Florida.
• Diamond and Dennis Haskins, who played Mr. Belding, were both left out of Peacock’s 2020 “Saved by the Bell” revival series.

A Diagnosis That Outran Him

Diamond’s decline happened in a matter of days, not months. He was hospitalized in Florida in January 2021, and what started as a vague, worrying illness turned out to be stage 4 small-cell carcinoma — an aggressive cancer that had already spread by the time doctors caught it. His representative, Roger Paul, confirmed the diagnosis publicly only shortly before announcing that Diamond had died on February 1, 2021, at 44.

Paul made a point of telling fans that the end came quickly and without the prolonged suffering many feared for someone diagnosed so late.

“Dustin did not suffer. He did not have to lie submerged in pain.”

That three-week window between diagnosis and death is what made the news land so hard for a generation of viewers who’d grown up with Screech as the goofy constant at Bayside High.

Screech Across Four Shows

Diamond wasn’t a one-season guest star who got lucky with a memorable episode — he was Screech from the very beginning. He first played the character in the 1988 precursor “Good Morning, Miss Bliss,” carried him through the flagship 1989–1993 run, followed him into “Saved by the Bell: The College Years,” and stuck around for “Saved by the Bell: The New Class” after most of the original cast had moved on. Few actors in the franchise’s history logged as many years in the same role, which is part of why his death hit differently than the loss of a background player.

The Reboot’s Two Empty Chairs

When Peacock rebooted “Saved by the Bell” in 2020, it leaned on Mark-Paul Gosselaar and other original cast members returning as adults, but two of the show’s most recognizable faces were absent: Dennis Haskins’ Mr. Belding and Dustin Diamond’s Screech. Diamond’s death just months after that revival premiered turned an already noticeable absence into a permanent one, and it’s part of why the retrospective frames his passing as the moment the “Saved by the Bell” story lost one of its last irreplaceable pieces — a loss that echoes the kind of cast tributes covered in stars from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air you might not know died and stars from All in the Family you didn’t know passed away.

The Wider Bayside Family

Beyond Diamond, the video works as a memorial roll call for the supporting and guest performers who cycled through the franchise’s multiple seasons and spinoffs — the kind of names casual fans forget were ever on the show at all, but whose deaths quietly closed out chapters of the Bayside High story long after the cameras stopped rolling.

Diamond spent his entire adult career known first and foremost as Screech, for better or worse, and that three-week stretch between his cancer diagnosis and his death is still the detail that stops people cold when they hear the story for the first time — a kid actor who never really got to outgrow the role, gone at 44 before the reboot he inspired had even finished its first season.