A return statement in a recursive function is crucial as it determines the output of each recursive call and ultimately, the final result. When a base case is met, the function returns a value which gets passed back up the recursion stack. This returned value can be used in subsequent operations within the higher-level calls. If there’s no return statement or if it doesn’t involve the results from recursive calls, the function will not yield meaningful outputs. In essence, the return statement acts like a messenger, carrying data between different levels of recursion until the initial function call receives the final result.
