“The Office” Will Officially Shut Its Doors After Season Nine

Be prepared to say goodbye to Dunder Mifflin…

Today is reporting that NBC will be ending its long-running “The Office” after the upcoming ninth season.

Executive producer Greg Daniels, who will return as showrunner for the final year, told reporters in a conference call that he has no doubt the final season will bring a lot of exciting times for fans and creators alike:

“As we head into the home stretch, we have a lot of exciting things I’ve been wanting to do since season two…The end should be pretty cool.”

Daniels says that this was the “last chance” for the crew “to go out” the way he had envisioned:

“At some point you have a choice: to always tell the beginnings of stories and the middles or to allow a story to end and I think endings can be very powerful and meaningful pieces of the story…If we didn’t let it end this year, I don’t know if we would have been able to tell the endings for so many character that I really want to know the endings for.”

So what should we expect for the final season of “The Office”?  Daniels says that he and the writers plan to squeeze as many character arcs and ideas in as possible:

“The real heart of the show are these arcs that allow these characters to have ongoing stories. It’s all going to be set up in the premiere…There’s so much to pay off from nine seasons, so many great characters that my biggest concern is just tacking in these great ideas that the writing staff has on the walls and making sure we hit all of them or at least squeeze as many into the ending.”

Daniels also added that “familiar faces [will be] coming back”, and despite being the last hurrah, there will be new cast members like Jake Lacy and Clark Duke.

And yes, we will finally get to meet that documentary crew that’s been following around our favorite paper-company employees for so long.

“The Office” returns to NBC September 20 at 9 p.m.