The Office Series Finale Date Set For May

We've known for a while now that The Office was on its last season, but the actual date of the final episode had no yet been set. Today, NBC released the official air date of the series finale of The Office. The milestone 200th episode will air Thursday, May 16, after which the doors of Dunder Mifflin Scranton will be closed forever.

Based on Ricky Gervais' popular British series by the same name, The Office premiered almost eight years ago, introducing us to the staff of the Scranton branch of a mid-level paper company called Dunder Mifflin. Tapping into the humor in the mundane lives of cubicle-dwelling office workers, the series began to find its own identity beyond the original show, as each of the characters began to emerge and relationships among them developed. The series has avoided directly addressing the camera crew that's been following these characters around for close to a decade, up until the last few episodes, which have taken a drastic turn in that regard as one of the people on the production crew, a boom-microphone operator named Brian, has begun interacting with Pam.

Brian's appearance seemed like a big indication that the comedy was revving up for its approach toward the finale. All will hopefully be revealed between now and when the series wraps up for good. NBC says the one-hour finale is set for Thursday, May 16 at 9:00 p.m. The two combined episodes count as eps 199 and 200, which seems like a nice round number to close out the long-running comedy.

There was a planned spin-off comedy featuring Rainn Wilson's beet farm-owning character Dwight, but that's since been scrapped, and there's been no other news on any other potential Joeys spinoffs to carry the Office world forward. But there have been updates on the cast moving on to other projects. Mindy Kaling has already left the show to star in The Mindy Project, which airs on Fox now. And just last night we learned that Ellie Kemper signed on to star in an NBC pilot. With The Office wrapping up, we're hopeful that all of the cast members find future projects in television (or on the big screen).