An Unexpected Face Returns in the Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 12 Trailer

While Larry David hopefully isn’t going anywhere, the story of “Larry David” will soon be coming to an end. HBO has confirmed that Curb Your Enthusiasm season 12 will be the final outing for the beloved comedy series about the largely improvised and (hopefully) fictionalized misadventures of star and creator Larry David.

How will Larry’s story end? Presumably not with him and his friends being sentenced to prison like in the much-maligned Seinfeld finale that David wrote, even if that would be a masterstroke of trolling. If the first official trailer for Curb Your Enthusiasm season 12 is any indication, Larry is going to go out the way he came in: complaining.

This trailer is notable for many reasons but the most compelling one in our estimation arrives early on. Take a look at the scene that begins around the 17-second mark. Is that none other than City Councilwoman Irma Kostroski (Tracy Ullman)? Indeed it is! Larry and Irma still seem pretty close, if not romantically connected even. At least they’re familiar enough for Irma to discuss the possibility of what Larry would look like with breasts. Larry concludes that he’d look “Pretty cute. Pret-tay Pret-tayyyyy cute.”

In case you don’t recall the events of Curb Your Enthusiasm season 11, the reason it’s a little strange that Larry and Irma are not only still hanging out but even seemingly have chemistry is quite simple: they loathe each other. Larry initially sought out a relationship with Irma for a very “Larry David” reason. He wanted L.A. City Council to abolish the statute that requires fences around pools and the only way he could think to do so was by seducing Irma Kostroski to influence her vote, even if he couldn’t stand her.

By season’s end, Larry and Irma are a reluctant couple – or at least they were until Irma discovered that Larry had stolen her dead grandfather’s shoes from a Holocaust museum. Understandably devastated by this development, Irma begins drinking again after years of sobriety, ends up missing the crucial vote to overturn the law, and Larry remains in non-compliance with Los Angeles city code.

Why then are Larry and Irma still together? Well obviously because Larry David and Tracey Ullman are hilarious together! Didn’t you read all the hinjix above? Showrunner Jeff Schaffer confirms as much in an interview with Vanity Fair, saying: “You think the Holocaust shoes are the basement, but there’s always a subbasement. There’s always a little latch in the floor and a ladder going way down. We’ll find it.”

Unfortunately Schaffer also goes on to say that they brought the brilliant Ullman back for only “a little bit,” which takes some wind out of my theory that Larry will remain romantically engaged to a woman who truly annoys him forever. But pending the results of the actual Curb Your Enthusiasm finale, that can just be my own headcanon ending for Larry David going forward.

Curb Your Enthusiasm season 12 premieres Sunday, Feb. 4 at 10 p.m. ET on HBO and Max.