Glee Spoilers: First Look at Graduation — Goodbye, Ohio!

The time has come to officially bid McKinley High School farewell. This year’s seniors will graduate during Season 5 Episode 13: “New Directions,” and then the show is leaving Ohio behind. Start packing your bags. After this episode, the rest of Season 5 will take place in New York City.

In the second part of Glee’s two-part 100th episode, the senior New Directions — that’s Blaine (Darren Criss), Sam (Chord Overstreet), Artie (Kevin McHale) and Tina (Jenna Ushkowitz) — will graduate and leave McKinley behind.

The next episode Season 5 Episode 14 is titled “New New York,” and will be the first in a very long line of NYC-only episode to come. But today, the cast said an emotional goodbye to the high school that has been their home base for the past five seasons.

Early in the morning on February 6, Jenna Ushkowitz got the flurry of on-set photos started when she posted an Instagram photo of a “Congrats Grad” centerpiece. “” she wrote. A Twitter exchange between Kevin and Amber Riley tells us that Mercedes will not be present during this year’s graduation. Too bad she didn’t decided to come back and watch!

John Lock, who plays one of the band members, posted an Instagram photo of the McKinley auditorium all decked out for graduation, while cinematographer Joaquin Sedillo tweeted a photo of the diplomas. “Emotional day on set...” he wrote.

So far, we’ve seen no photos of the grad’s faces, but a crew member did tweet a photo of the seniors from behind as they headed across Paramount Studios in their bright red caps and gowns on their way to set

It’s the end of an era, guys. It really is. We love the idea of Glee making a switch to NYC, but we won’t lie: Leaving McKinley behind is going to be hard. Looks like it’s time to dig out the ‘ole tissues once again.