'Glee' signs off with a perfect, teary tribute to Cory Monteith
Contains major spoilers about the series finale of Glee.
The harmonious students of McKinley High belted out a final tune Friday, as the messy, musical Glee came to an end after six seasons. The two-episode finale started with a flashback to 2009, before jumping between 2015 and 2020 to see how various characters' Dreams Come True.
In the final scene of the show ...
Now vice president of the United States (we'll come back to that later), Sue returns to McKinley High to dedicate the auditorium as the new Finn Hudson Auditorium (in memory of the character and the late Cory Monteith). She delivers a moving speech about imagining the world not as it is but as it should be, before joining glee club members past and present in OneRepublic's I Lived. In the final shot, we get a last look at the new dedication, as well as a memorial to Finn and Lillian Adler (Jane Galloway Heitz), the former head of McKinley's glee club.
As for everyone else...
Rachel (Lea Michele)
Rachel spent the majority of the last episode all weepy over other people's goodbyes ...
... before she knocked the grand, emotional This Time out of the park as she aimlessly wandered the McKinley halls alone. Fast-forward five years, and she's pregnant with Kurt and Blaine's surrogate baby! Married to Jesse St. James (Jonathan Groff)! And finally wins a Tony Award for best actress in a musical (over Willow Smith in Cabaret and Anne Hathaway in her one-woman show, Anne! We laughed). It's pretty much the acceptance speech we imagine Michele gives her bathroom mirror every day, only with a much bigger thank you to Mr. Schue.
Kurt (Chris Colfer) and Blaine (Darren Criss)
Kurt and Blaine also just kind of meander around McKinley, bobbing their heads to friends' goodbye songs. Flash forward to 2020, and we learn that they've staged the first LGBT version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at Lincoln Center. They're also experts at leading kids in singalongs of the Monkees' Daydream Believer, at the wonderfully diverse Harvey Milk Elementary School. It's all very beautiful.
Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison)
After the New Directions win the high-school national show choir championships, Mr. Schue finds out that McKinley is going to become a high school for the performing arts — and he'll be the principal! "My life changed because of all the magic we created in this room," he tells glee kids old and new, before serenading them on ukulele with Crosby, Stills & Nash's Teach Your Children. Watching the Tonys in 2020 with wife Emma (Jayma Mays) and their household of kids, we also see that he's tight with Sue, who keeps a bodyguard close by.
Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch)
As mentioned, it's the future and Sue's vice president. Oh, and in 2024? She's gunning for the Oval Office. It's all very random, but hey, Becky (Lauren Potter) heads her security team, which is awesome. Back in 2015, Sue bids a sweet goodbye to Kurt and Blaine, and duets with Mr. Schue on a (kinda funny?) Winner Takes It All by Abba, kicking over the pianist's stool as she leaves the stage. Classic Sue exit.
Mercedes (Amber Riley)
Guess what? She's going to be the opening act on Beyoncé's world tour! And record an album after! So don't hug her, or else she's going to start crying! Seriously, guys, she really wants to get out of McKinley with no human contact. Delivering a powerhouse rendition of Diana Ross' Someday We'll Be Together as her friends look on, Mercedes creeps out of the auditorium, reuniting with them five years later on the eve of Rachel's Tony win.
Sam Evans (Chord Overstreet)
Blaine invites him to go to New York to live with him and Kurt, but Sam's got other plans ... like replacing Mr. Schue as head of the glee club! And he's going to teach them country songs, such as Kenny Chesney's She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy. All is right with the world, we guess.
Artie (Kevin McHale) and Tina (Jenna Ushkowitz)
Like everyone else, they're really just kind of walking and wheeling around crying the whole episode. Except we briefly learn that Mercedes couldn't star in Artie's movie, so Tina is going to. And it's going to play Slamdance (not Sundance). And they want to use Mercedes' songs in it. And ... that's pretty much it with those two.
We'll sure miss these crazy, melodious kids.