Steve Carell returned in a surprise cameo for The Office's final episode, but hiding it from the cast & crew made his iconic last line much weirder.
When trying to hide Steve Carell’s cameo in The Office’s series finale, Michael Scott’s last line was given to another character, which made it much creepier. After leading the series as one of TV’s most iconic characters, Steve Carell left The Office at the end of season 7 as his character Michael Scott moved to Colorado to be with his fiancée, Holly Flax. Although Dunder Mifflin’s employees were a family to Michael, he was only mentioned on a few occasions after his exit, finally reappearing for a quick cameo in The Office’s season 9 finale, as a surprise attendee at Angela and Dwight’s wedding.
In true Michael fashion, his return in The Office’s finale began with the line “that’s what she said,” and ended with a well-meaning but wrongly worded statement about his former co-workers. The final line that Michael Scott utters in The Office is, “I feel like all my kids grew up and then they married each other. It’s every parent’s dream,” with tears with his eyes and a wide smile on his face. In the scene, he’s sitting at a table alone while he watches newlyweds Angela and Dwight speak with The Office’s main romantic interests Jim and Pam, reflecting on how happy he is for the people who he called his best friends throughout most of the series.
While Michael Scott’s last line is perfect for the character, it was made much creepier when said at the cast’s table read for the season 9 finale. Because only a select few The Office cast and crew members knew about Steve Carell’s surprise cameo, much of his dialogue was cut at the table read. The entire scene where Jim surprises Dwight with Michael as his best man was left out, while Steve Carell’s line about his children growing up to marry each other was read by Creed Bratton. Creed is widely regarded as The Office’s most outrageous, eccentric, and disturbing character due to his (multiple) backstories, general aloofness, and suggestions that he may actually be a murderer. Considering none of The Office’s characters are particularly close with the possible Manson Family member Creed, a line about him considering Pam, Jim, Angela, and Dwight his children and being happy that they married each other isn’t comically endearing like when Michael says it. Instead, it’s much weirder, as Creed would be saying it with no particular sentimentality or ignorance of the implication of his words.
Creed reading Michael’s secret line received plenty of laughs, but this boiled down to being another bizarre off-hand Creed quote. When Michael says his final The Office line, it has far more bittersweet emotion behind it, where the line instead elicits a happy sadness at his joy for his friends, but laughs at showing that he still doesn’t quite think through what he says. Michael making an uncomfortable, poorly-worded statement at the marriages of Angela and Dwight, and Pam and Jim was a perfect wrap-up to his entire character. He still has that slightly idiotic air to him, but delivers the line in an emotionally heartfelt way that indicates these are some of the people that he loves most in the entire world, and he’s happy that they’re happy together.
Giving Michael’s line to the character that would have the least-effective delivering of the sentimentality behind the quote was also the best way for The Office to hide Carell’s cameo. Instead of giving it to another parental figure like Phyllis, who would also mean it in a heartfelt way, the bittersweet emotion behind Michael Scott’s last line was saved for Steve Carell, thus not taking away from the powerful influence of his character. Just as Michael Scott received his own perfect last line, Creed Bratton had a fitting way to conclude his character in The Office’s season 9 finale, calling Dunder Mifflin home—after becoming homeless—as he’s arrested by the police.
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