decorateWidget does not return vDom element

Development
3

Oh wait ya I just realized that too. I should just use my actual code instead of trying to simplify my problem.

I am doing this:

api.decorateWidget('post-meta-data:after', dec => {
  const attrs = dec.attrs;
  function passViews(views) {
    //views is successfully passed to this function from getJSON
    console.log(views);
    //the below vDom test element does NOT attach as expected
    return h('i.fa.fa-eye'));
  }
  $.getJSON(attrs.topicUrl + '.json', function (data) {
    //passing function to success because ultimately I want to
    // get the topic views
    success: passViews(data.views);
  });
});