In October at PaleyFest Glee creator Ryan Murphy announced that the musical dramedy’s sixth season will be its last. He admitted his idea about how the show would end and it involved Lea Michele’s Rachel character and the late Cory Monteith’s Finn.
“I always knew how it would end,” Murphy told the press. “I knew what the last shot was–he [Monteith] was in it. I knew what the last line was–she [Michele] said it to him. So when a tragedy like that happens you sort of have to pause and figure out what you want to do, so we’re figuring that out now.”
On Monday Entertainment Weekly shed light on exactly what Murphy had in mind for the show’s ending with a “Late Great” essay penned by Murphy himself.
The ending of Glee is something I have never shared with anyone, but I always knew it. I’ve always relied on it as a source of comfort, a North Star. At the end of season 6, Lea [Michele]‘s Rachel was going to have become a big Broadway star, the role she was born to play. Finn was going to have become a teacher, settled down happily in Ohio, at peace with his choice and no longer feeling like a Lima loser. The very last line of dialogue was to be this: Rachel comes back to Ohio, fulfilled and yet not, and walks into Finn’s glee club. “What are you doing here?” he would ask. “I’m home,” she would reply. Fade out. The end.
Sound familiar? That’s because the blanks had already been filled during the Finn tribute episode; in “The Quarterback” Rachel has an exchange with Mr. Schue where she imagines her future with Finn and it’s pretty much what Murphy had planned to do if Monteith hadn’t passed so suddenly.
So how will Glee end now? That’s still being kept under wraps, but at PaleyFest Murphy said, “I’m going to tell the studio and the network how after Cory’s unfortunate passing we can end the show that I think is very satisfactory. And kind of in his honor, which I love.”
