Ryan Murphy Says Glee Should Have Ended After Cory Monteith’s Tribute Episode

Glee nearly ended much sooner than its six-season run. During the second part of his interview on Kevin McHale and Jenna Ushkowitz’s podcast And That’s What You REALLY Missed, Glee creator Ryan Murphy said Glee should have ended after Cory Monteith’s death. The actor died in 2013 at the age of 31 due to a drug overdose after concluding the fourth season. In response, the cast and crew created a tribute episode entitled “The Quarterback” that aired just a few months later.

Nearly a decade after his death, Murphy said that he regretted making the tribute episode that quickly. “I thought a lot about that recently, and I would not have done that show now,” he said. “I felt like it was way too raw and way too soon.” In fact, the writer-director likely would not have gone forward with the series at all. “If I had to do it again, we would've stopped for a very long time and probably not come back,” he explained. “Now, if this had happened, I would be like, ‘That's the end.’ Because you can't really recover from something like that.”

McHale revealed that the cast was given the option to not be in the episode, but they still felt the pressure to participate. “It felt like, ‘I feel like everyone’s going to do it. I don’t want to be the one person who’s not a part of this,’” he recalled. Ushkowitz added that they did the episode hoping that they would receive some closure over Monteith’s death “in some weird, f*cked up way.”

However, they aren’t sure how they would approach the situation today. “Creatively, I don’t know how you get around it if you don’t address it,” McHale said, with Ushkowitz adding that there’s “no right or wrong answer.” Eventually, they decided to move forward with the show and tribute episode after conversations with the network and Monteith’s then-girlfriend Lea Michele, in part to keep their crew of several hundred workers employed, but it’s not a time that Murphy can revisit. “It's an episode I was able to watch once,” he shared. “And I never looked at it again.”

In July, Michele shared a similar sentiment before performing her tribute number, “Make You Feel My Love,” at a Washington, D.C. show, revealing she’s never watched the episode. “It's the only one I've not seen, because I think if I don't watch it, it just kind of feels like Finn is still there,” she explained. As difficult as it was, she said filming “The Quarterback” was also a healing experience in some ways, and her song choice helped her get through it. “It was wild and hard, but we healed together, and this song helped,” she said. “I said I don't want to be treated with kid gloves. I want to just come back to work and be with everyone because this is the only way I'm going to feel better.”