Ryan Murphy reveals his original plan for "Glee" ending

In paying tribute to the "Glee" star Cory Monteith, series co-creator Ryan Murphy has revealed how the late actor was central to his original vision for how the show would end.

Murphy eulogized Monteith at a private memorial service in July, and part of that remembrance was excerpted in Entertainment Weekly's year-end issue.

"The ending of 'Glee' is something I have never shared with anyone, but I always knew it. I've always relied on it as a source of comfort, a North Star," Murphy said. "At the end of season 6, Lea [Michele]'s Rachel was going to have become a big Broadway star, the role she was born to play. Finn was going to have become a teacher, settled down happily in Ohio, at peace with his choice and no longer feeling like a Lima loser. The very last line of dialogue was to be this: Rachel comes back to Ohio, fulfilled and yet not, and walks into Finn's glee club. 'What are you doing here?' he would ask. 'I'm home,' she would reply. Fade out. The end."

As TVLine notes, a version of this scene made its way into "The Quarterback," the episode this season that paid tribute to Monteith and addressed the death of his character on the show, Finn Hudson. In it, Rachel recounts to their former teacher, Mr. Schuester (Matthew Morrison), what she thought their future would have been like.

In the eulogy, Murphy also recalled how the actor was a central part of "Glee" from the moment the show began. 

"For me, Cory was both the beginning and the ending of 'Glee'…literally," he said. "The first scene of the pilot was Cory's Finn and Matt [Morrison]'s Mr. Schu. None of us really knew what we were doing. 'Glee' was a musical, musicals had never worked on television, and we were figuring it out as we went along. At the end of his first take, Cory could see I, his director, was a little unsure. He came up to me with a big grin and said, 'This is going to be fun.' He was terribly right, and terribly wrong."

Moneteith died in July of a heroin and alcohol overdose, at the age of 31.