You could say that the writing was on the wall. After all, Mindy Kalling has her own show on FOX this season, Rainn Wilson is preparing to be the “Joey” of the Office cast with his spin-off, and of course, Steve Carell already quit last year. There had been talks of doing everything from just pushing forward to doing a complete reboot of The Office, but now NBC is officially announcing that this season will be the ninth and final for the show.
Series’ developer/executive producer Greg Daniels said: “It was a hard decision but this is going to be a real gangbuster season. This year feels like the last chance” for The Office to have “an artistic ending. There is so much to pay off from nine seasons of great characters and the core cast are all going to be there. Now that we know we have an end date, we can take some chances and blow things up.”
When the show returns on Sept. 20th, Ed Helms, John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer will be back full time, but Rainn Wilson, will be jumping off mid-season to his spin-off.
This season, Daniels is promising that a lot of the stories will get their full closure and that we’ll actually get to know the identity of the documentary camera crew.
They have also stated that they’d love for Steve Carell to return for the finale, but they aren’t going to try and pressure him into reprising the role of Michael Scott.
The final season of The Office will be 22 episodes.