Earlier today Steve Carell confirmed that he’s leaving The Office at the end of next season. While he insists that the show could go on sans Michael Scott (“It doesn’t certainly mean the end of the show. I think it’s just a dynamic change to the show, which could be a good thing, actually. Add some new life and some new energy…I see it as a positive in general for the show.”), we’ve considered the TV comedy past its expiration date for a few years now. After the jump we’ve got a few suggestions on how we think things should wrap up inspired by some other famous series endings that you might recognize. Feel free to add to it in the comments.
– Michael reveals that most of the people from the series weren’t actually real, but characters that he dreamed up to help him deal with the boring life of a middle manager at a paper company.
– Cece Halpert, Jim and Pam’s baby daughter, is now a grown woman, and making a documentary about the documentary that first brought her parents together.
– After several deaths involving the Sabre printers, the entire office is put on trial, and characters ranging from Jan to David Wallace are brought in to testify. They are all sentenced to a year in jail together.
– Michael discovers that Sabre Corp was a tax write-off and designed to fail. He convinces Jo to let the company try to succeed, and in exchange for his silence is promoted to Vice President and relocated to Florida.
– The romance between Michael and Holly Flax is rekindled and they decide to marry. As the two of them are boarding a plane bound for Nashua, New Hampshire, Michael gets off, realizing that he’s happier working at the office.
– After losing control of the Scranton office to Jim, his Co-Regional Manager, Michael contemplates suicide. Darryl reveals to Michael what everyone’s lives would have been like if he’d never existed. The last scene shows Jim walking into Michael’s office, and we hear a gunshot off-screen.
– The news that Michael has been fired causes waves of celebration to spread throughout the office. When the news turns out to be false, Stanley drops dead of a heart attack.
– A light turns on, and David Brent wakes up alone in his bedroom. As it turns out, the entire series was just a recurring nightmare that he had about being an annoying middle-manager in America named Michael Scott.