I liked it! To be honest, it was way better than I’d dared hope for. Sam had a real journey of grappling with his desire to be a leader, realizing how little those distinctions matter, and devoting himself to being a total team player. Since his first season, we’ve seen him be incredibly good at reading other people and identifying the things they’re self-conscious or worried about – he actually mirrors Santana in that respect, except he uses it to reassure people and encourage them to be more confident. (See: Quinn, Mercedes, Marley, Blaine, Brittany, Rachel, etc.) He’s also been one of the most immediately accepting characters when it comes to sexual and gender identity and personal choices. He never engaged in bullying and challenged those who did.

So I think he’s got the perfect disposition for teaching, especially a subject that involves a lot of raw emotion and vulnerability. He’s destined to be the Will Schuester we all deserved, and I think that’s pretty awesome. I’ve found it compelling that Sam wasn’t fixated on fame and never cared about being a star, because that’s so rare among the Glee characters. It doesn’t feel like a let-down for him to find a path out of the limelight, because that’s just his speed. I’ve always thought the modeling thing was borderline unhealthy for him, since it seemed to stem from his body image issues and the self-esteem black hole that is underage sex work. He teetered on the edge of believing his self-worth was directly related to being aesthetically pleasing – which is obviously untrue, and pretty tragic for a character who’s sensitive and caring and has so much to offer.

I also think it was a good choice to leave him unattached in the end. He has the weird distinction of being romantically linked to all of the first gen glee girls, and spent most of his time on the show bouncing from relationship to relationship. I know a lot of fans wanted a Samcedes reunion, but after her many firm rejections over the years, that would have fallen pretty flat for me. He really didn’t have a well-developed OTP pairing the way most of the central characters did, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing – like Mercedes and fame, or Rachel and Broadway (which obviously Jesse personified), Sam’s real narrative partner was always the idea of family. So it makes me happy that he’s spending the future as an important part of a supportive, close-knit community. That’s basically a best case scenario.