Glee club director Will Schuester (played by Matthew Morrison) creates a week assignment of "Last Chances" after Brittany Pierce (Heather Morris) announces her beliefs that an asteroid will destroy the city, although she soon finds out that it was actually a ladybug that was on her telescope.
As the glee club gathers in the choir room, two gunshots are heard, and the school goes into lockdown, with Brittany trapped in the bathroom and Tina stranded outside because she was late.
Ryder calls Katie's phone, and it rings inside the choir room; Artie Abrams (Kevin McHale) encourages the glee club members to record their goodbyes to their families in case they die.
Will also creates an online dating profile for Beiste, and is surprised when one of her suitors turns out to be former football coach Ken Tanaka (Patrick Gallagher), while Sam presents Brittany with another cat, Lady Tubbington, and she finally declares her love for him as well.
[1] Recurring characters in this episode include McKinley High football coach Shannon Beiste (Dot-Marie Jones), Principal Figgins (Iqbal Theba) and glee club members Wade "Unique" Adams (Alex Newell), Marley Rose (Melissa Benoist), Jake Puckerman (Jacob Artist), Kitty Wilde (Becca Tobin) and Ryder Lynn (Blake Jenner), cheerleader Becky Jackson (Lauren Potter), Marley's mother and McKinley lunch lady Millie Rose (Trisha Rae Stahl) and Ryder's online love interest "Katie Fitzgerald", who has used the likeness of a McKinley student named Marissa (Ginny Gardner).
[10] The episode, airing four months after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, was too much for the parents of that town, as noted by Los Angeles Times contributor Patrick Kevin Day.
[11] Andrew Paley, whose children survived the shooting at Sandy Hook, appeared on CNN on April 12, 2013 to complain that no one from Glee or its network, Fox, reached out to warn the people of Newtown about the content of the episode.
[12] While he conceded that the series "has never been a show that shied away from hot-button topics", TVLine correspondent Michael Slezak noted that episode's central plot "runs headlong into one of the most polarizing debates facing the [United States] today."
Slezak asserted that the "harrowing" episode has effective, powerful sequences that "stick with [the viewer] after the credits stop rolling", and lauded the writing for preventing "Shooting Star" from "turning into Law & Order: Lima, while still retaining its teeth".
"[13] Vulture's Lauren Hoffman gave the installment a one-star rating out of five, saying the show is not very good at tackling a big issue such as a school shooting, unlike My So-Called Life and Degrassi: The Next Generation.