The Office is leaving Netflix in 2021 because NBC wants it back

Well, it’s official: The Office is leaving Netflix.

Michael Scott and the rest of Dunder Mifflin will be heading for another streaming service come January 2021.

By far the most popular show on Netflix in 2018, The Office was bound to leave the service eventually — or, at the very least, see some HUGE contract renegotiations.

The show’s departure had been rumored a few times before now, but were quickly debunked. Now word of the end date comes straight from Netflix itself:

We're sad that NBC has decided to take The Office back for its own streaming platform — but members can binge watch the show to their hearts' content ad-free on Netflix until January 2021

— Netflix US (@netflix) June 25, 2019

NBC backs this up with a press release here, saying that they plan to hold it for a “soon-to-be-launched streaming service” of their own. In other words: ‘yeah, it’s the most popular on-demand show on the Internet, of course we’re taking it back.’ (Or, to paraphrase Michael G. Scott: ‘Sometimes I start a [streaming service] and I don’t even know where it’s going. I just hope I find it along the way.’)

It’s been a good run. The Office has been on a more-or-less endless loop in our household for the past few years (though, admittedly, sometimes that loop restarts a few seasons before the actual end because, well, come on.)

On the upside, you’ve got well over a year to finish watching it, be it for the first time or the 81st. Will its departure make me sign up for yet-another-streaming service? Probably not. Will it make me just buy the whole damned thing outright on iTunes/Google Play/whatever so I can keep streaming it in the background until the end of time? That’s a bit more likely.

I can’t decide whether to end this with a Michael Scott “NOOOOOO” GIF or a Kelly Kapoor “Number one, how dare you?”, so imagine that the sentiment is something of a combination of the two.