Everyone knew Glee would have a delay after the death of the Cory Monteieth, who plays Finn Hudson, but the decision of how long it would be delayed, or if it would come back at all, was up to Cory’s girlfriend and co-star Lea Michele. Despite the painful time, she decided that the show must go on.
”Ultimately, the person who made the decision was Lea, who felt that the best thing for the cast and crew was to be together and to get back to work and be together every day and talk about our memories of him,” the show’s creator Ryan Murphy said to Entertainment Weekly. “If Lea had said to me, ‘I could never do this again and I don’t want to do this again,’ you know, she is sort of the show, so what do you do? And I would’ve, out of respect to her as a person, said ‘okay,’ but that’s not how Lea operates. Everyone involved made the decision, ‘Okay, what does Lea want to do, what would Lea feel comfortable doing?’ This is what she wants to do…. We followed her lead.” Part of the reason she was so adamant about getting back to work was to make sure the cast and crew would get to be paid.
Ryan said they already have a lot of footage shot of the cast performing Beatles songs, so that will be the backbone of the first two episodes. The third episode, according to Ryan, will be a tribute to Cory, and will be about his character Finn Hudson’s death. Fans have wondered if writers were going to have Finn die, or find another reason for him to be absent from the show, but Ryan Murphy has confirmed that Finn will pass away. After the third episode, the show will go on hiatus while everyone figures out what will happen with Glee. They plan on setting up some sort of scholarship or foundation in honor of Cory. What ultimately happens with Glee in the long-run doesn’t really matter right now, but it will probably be therapeutic in a way for the people working on the show, and for the fans as well, to make a tribute for Cory.
Glee is scheduled to return to FOX September 26 for a few episodes.
