diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v2.1.0.rst b/doc/source/whatsnew/v2.1.0.rst
index 4d166e954bfbb..a5520d9e5ca2f 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v2.1.0.rst
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v2.1.0.rst
@@ -636,7 +636,7 @@ Reshaping
 ^^^^^^^^^
 - Bug in :func:`concat` coercing to ``object`` dtype when one column has ``pa.null()`` dtype (:issue:`53702`)
 - Bug in :func:`crosstab` when ``dropna=False`` would not keep ``np.nan`` in the result (:issue:`10772`)
-- Bug in :func:`melt` where the ``variable`` column would lose extension dtypes (:issue:`?`)
+- Bug in :func:`melt` where the ``variable`` column would lose extension dtypes (:issue:`54297`)
 - Bug in :func:`merge_asof` raising ``KeyError`` for extension dtypes (:issue:`52904`)
 - Bug in :func:`merge_asof` raising ``ValueError`` for data backed by read-only ndarrays (:issue:`53513`)
 - Bug in :func:`merge_asof` with ``left_index=True`` or ``right_index=True`` with mismatched index dtypes giving incorrect results in some cases instead of raising ``MergeError`` (:issue:`53870`)
diff --git a/pandas/tests/reshape/test_melt.py b/pandas/tests/reshape/test_melt.py
index 19895f419691a..bf03aa56a1da2 100644
--- a/pandas/tests/reshape/test_melt.py
+++ b/pandas/tests/reshape/test_melt.py
@@ -438,6 +438,7 @@ def test_melt_ea_dtype(self, dtype):
         tm.assert_frame_equal(result, expected)
 
     def test_melt_ea_columns(self):
+        # GH 54297
         df = DataFrame(
             {
                 "A": {0: "a", 1: "b", 2: "c"},