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It’s time to break out the Kleenex and the super-cheesy mix tapes you’ve unabashedly saved since that one time at band camp. Our darling baby gleeks are graduating and going off into the world! But not before sewing up all those old unresolved plot lines from back in the day, and passing the torch to the next generation with as much fanfare and ceremony as possible. Oh, Glee. We will miss having all our baby chicks under one roof…but since the outcome leads to Quinn and Rachel striking out for NYC all alone together with their matching Metro North passes, I think we’ll all sleep just fine tonight.

OK, so let’s dig in to our last supper of Glee, brought to you by your Heavenly Father Grilled Cheezus. The episode begins with Schue walking down the hall looking pensive; I was worried for a minute we were gonna get a big angsty internal monologue, but thank goodness he just keeps walking and arrives at the choir room, where the original 5 gleeks—Rachel, Tina, Mercedes, Artie & Kurt—are performing their very first number, Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat, for the rest of the club; and just in case there are some viewers who don’t remember this tiny detail from 3 years ago, Mr. Schue watches them and then sees them in a flashback to the original number back in 2009, with the kids in their old Season 1 outfits. It’s sweet and lays the perfect groundwork for a finale chock full of nostalgia and coming full circle, which is most of what the rest of the hour is devoted to. (Also: Brittany still thinks Joe is a girl.)

^Then...

^{...and now!}

Mr. Schue calls them to order and writes the week’s assignment, GOODBYE, on the board, since they’ve got nothing left to prepare for but saying goodbye to each other. Then he starts them off with his own goodbye number to the seniors, Forever Young, which I want to hate because it’s so damn cheesy…but I just can’t help loving it, because it’s so damn cheesy. We get a few super-adorable shots of the seniors all exchanging loving glances, and Quinn and Santana hold hands and Dianna continues her reign as best actress ever without any lines.

We cut to Kurt, the first of the seniors to walk