Guess Who’s Coming to The Office?

That’s right, Will Ferrell is coming to The Office. In these, Steve Carell’s last hours as Michael Scott, Will Ferrell will swoop in like a similarly styled comedian from heaven to ease everyone’s worried hearts as Michael heads on out to greener pastures in the form of eloping with Holly (right? That’s what’s going to happen, isn’t it?).

Here’s how it’s going down:

Ferrell, 43, will join the NBC sitcom for a guest role in which he plays a branch manager who arrives from the home office and proves just as inept as Carell’s Michael Scott, Deadline.com reports.

“We found Steve Carell when he was nothing but a movie star, and we turned him into a television star,” executive producer Paul Lieberstein says. “We are proud to continue The Office‘s tradition of discovering famous talent, and we hope that once America gets a good look at Will, they’ll see what we see: tremendous raw sexuality.”

After seven seasons as the show’s dunderheaded boss, Carell, 48, is leaving four episodes before this season’s finale. Ferrell’s guest role will include Carell’s last three episodes, plus one more after his departure.

Ferrell reportedly called the producers and offered his services because he’s a fan and wanted to give Carell a proper farewell.

This seems about right to me.  I do have some severe sad feelings about Michael leaving (did you guys see last week’s episode?  Who else is going to force Kevin to eat his broccoli, you guys?), but this is a proper send-off.  Or at least as proper as it can get  – I’m not sure how realistic it would be if we found out that Michael and Holly had been married for years and had several children together.