Corey Monteith’s (pictured) role as Finn had already taken a back seat in Glee’s Season 5.

The cleaner-than-soap cast from Fox hit Glee managed to dance and sing its way to the top, before tragedy struck one of the show’s main protagonists in the past days.

Despite a reportedly turbulent lifestyle, no one quite expected Corey Monteith, who plays Finn Hudson, to go this way, particularly just when his career seemed to be at its apex. The star died of a heroin and alcohol overdose.

Quite apart from the personal tragic aspect of the story, the big question is, of course, how will Fox executives deal with this development in upcoming seasons? Granted, the old faces were meant to take quite a bit of a back seat in the upcoming Season 5, what with them finally taking different roads and a fresh batch of gleeful students supposedly planned.

The character of Finn himself had taken even more of a back seat with his romance with Rachel Berry (real-life girlfriend Lea Michele) floundering. In theory, coming up with a plausible reason for his disappearance from the storyline should not be too difficult – his appearances in Season 4 were very sporadic anyway, while Season 5 is most likely already mostly filmed.

The question, of course, is will Glee survive the double whammy of the death of a main cast member and the fact that a story that is supposed to centre around a high school club now stars adults.

Only time can tell, but a shaky future won’t stop me going all nostalgic about my love-hate relationship with the series. I say love-hate because ever since the pilot episode was inflicted upon thousands of unsuspecting viewers and the opening notes of Don’t Stop Believing (which used to be the theme song) kicked in... a whole generation of viewers was doomed. The number became so overplayed that the opening bars today are enough to send me reaching for the sick bag.

And yet, we all continued watching whatever song and dance act the irritatingly fresh-faced cast decided to throw at us week after week. The premise behind the show itself is a good one, mind you, if you’re into music numbers.

Whether Finn’s untimely disappearance will spell the end of Gleekdom as we know it, only time will tell

Actually, scratch that. Even if you’re not particularly keen on musicals, the problem with Glee is that it infects you with enthusiasm.

So much so that you end up singing along happily to a Britney Spears number even when, in reality, you’d rather die than admit to knowing anything whatsoever about Ms Spears’ ‘music’.

After you’ve spent a great 40 minutes singing along to the kind of music that your CD collection at home would sneer at, it’s time for the credits to roll. And that’s when you realise that you’ve been humming along to, oh my gosh, a Justin Bieber number.

So my predictions for Season 5 and the already-commissioned Season 6... whether Finn’s untimely disappearance will spell the end of Gleekdom as we know it, only time will tell.

In the meantime, we eagerly await the fifth season to see how the new adults are shaping up in the Big Apple.

rdepares@timesofmalta.com