The Bus Came Back: Bo and Luke return, after John Schneider and Tom Wopat settled their dispute with Warner Bros. over royalties, writing and various other issues.
Put on a Bus: Coy and Vance, who plan to leave to "tend to a sick relative."
While there was no doubt possibly a couple of fans hoping there'd be an off-screen explosion seconds after Coy and Vance drive off, with the "real" Duke boys and others ignoring it (or perhaps commenting, "Hey, what's that noise?" "I dunno" and going on with their business), those fans were in the minority. The vast majority – even those who clearly didn't like "the new Dukes," the scripts or the acting – have thought that Byron Cherry and Christopher Mayer deserved far better than just a two-minute scene with Bo, Luke, Coy and Vance exchanging pleasantries, making brief conversation, handing over the keys to the General Lee and saying goodbye. The consensus has been that the plot should have been a more dire one than usual, with Boss possibly seemingly having done everything perfectly to achieve his long-sought goal of acquiring the Duke farm, with all four Duke cousins needing to teaming up to defeat the bad guys, rather than just the standard "Bo and Luke help a friend in need" script with a goodbye scene tacked on the front. Additionally, a few critics had admitted that Cherry and Mayer had grown more comfortable in their roles and their acting (along with their characters) had improved vastly from their first episodes.
Ret-Gone and Unperson: Coy and Vance are never so much as mentioned again.
