A return statement in a function serves to terminate the execution of that function and send back, or “return”, a value from that function. It’s crucial for functions designed to perform calculations or other operations and provide results. The returned value can then be used elsewhere in the code. For instance, if we have a function that calculates the sum of two numbers, the return statement will give us the result of this calculation which can be stored in a variable or used directly. Without a return statement, a function would still execute its code but wouldn’t provide any output. In languages like JavaScript, absence of a return statement makes a function return undefined by default.
